


La Fille Du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment)

by MercuryGray



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love Letters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 48,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5979874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilbert de Motier, late of Chavaniac, Marquis de Lafayette and recently-made Major General in the Continental Army, is enjoying his new-found freedom away from Versailles, the stage business of court and the elaborate manners of his birth and breeding. Freedom of expression, of word, and thought, and ... perhaps, unexpectedly, a little bit of love, too... if the lady can be persuaded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Parte Un

Gilbert de Motier, late of Chavaniac, Marquis de Lafayette and recently made Major General in the Continental Army, was pleased to see that even hospitality was alive and well this far from the hallowed halls of society. True, his present quarters were not without their disadvantages - he was seated in a tent on a camp chair and the only light in the space was from a sputtering tallow candle in a tin holder --  but the company was equal to any he might have had in the glittering halls of Versailles, and the welcome he had received here a hundred times better than most offered by even the most glorious families of the First Estate. Everyone seemed genuinely happy that he was here -- not for these Americans the patrician practice of hiding their feelings. Everywhere he went there were congratulations and cups of wine. Very poor wine, but he could not grudge them that -- Americans had many things, but vineyards were not one of them. Perhaps when this was over he would purchase an estate in Virginia and see what he could do to remedy that. He loved hearing _le General_ speak of his home in Virginia, and longed to visit one day. It sounded like a paradise.

 

A pointedly cleared throat brought him back to the present moment -- inside the headquarters of _le General_ himself, George Washington, listening to one of his staff briefings. There had been many such meetings over the last several days, and it was easy to let one’s mind wander during the proceedings. The other officers and aides-de-camp were leaving, gathering up their papers, and the General was watching him with a careful eye. Gilbert sat up and tried to look as though he had heard the entire meeting and could now recite it from memory.  “You were saying, Marquis, that you wished to see more of the camp and meet some of the soldiers,” Washington remarked. “Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton has kindly offered to introduce you to his artillery company, if you are still so inclined.”

 

“Of course, _mon general!_ I should be most honored to accompany the Lieutenant Colonel.” The Marquis made a bow in the direction of Hamilton, a young man whose rather extravagant taste in fashion was matched only by a sharp wit and very strong opinions, which made many appearances in staff meetings. Lafayette liked him -- but then, it helped that Hamilton, who had been born in the West Indies, spoke much better French than most of Washington’s other officers.

 

“Splendid! I leave him in your capable hands, sir,” Washington remarked with a smile. Hamilton nodded, bowed to the Marquis, and held the tent-flap aside so the two men could make their exit.

 

“Just here, sir,” Hamilton indicated one of the many paths leading through camp. “I must apologize beforehand for the mess. We are at present without some critical supplies to keep camp in perfect order.”

 

Lafayette tried to hide his smile -- Hamilton, very much a dandy, would have considered himself undressed if a single fold of his stock were out of place. It was well to take his definition of the word ‘désordre’ with  -- what was the English expression? -- a grain of salt. (A curious expression, that -- whatever help did the salt do?)

 

The tents housing the Hearts of Oak, Hamilton’s artillery company, were without decoration or adornment -- a marvel, considering their commander’s taste for flourish and flair. It was also curiously quiet. “Is it usual in the American Army to have... _les filles du regiment_?” Gilbert asked, watching the progress  between the tents of an industrious looking young woman with an enormous basket of laundry.

 

Hamilton looked around, a little scandalized that the Marquis might be seeing ladies of ill repute in his camp before realizing what he was looking at. “...filles de...Oh, _her?_ That is Miss Frances. The daughter of one of our sergeants. We have several men whose families travel with us -- at half rations, you understand. They take care of the cooking and the laundry and other ... sundries. More _domestiques_ than _filles de regiment._ But exceedingly useful -- especially this one. Miss Frances!” The little _domestique_ looked up from her laundry and flushed a little, quickly rearranging her cap, which had fallen a little off her hair. Gilbert had to smile at little. Hamilton beckoned her over.

 

“Marquis, allow me to introduce to you Miss Margaret Frances. Miss Frances, Major General Gilbert de Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette.”

 

Gilbert doffed his hat and swept his most impressive bow, which seemed to impress Miss Frances, an unremarkable young woman only a little older than his Adrienne. She recovered her composure well, and ducked a little curtsey with fine style, nervously adjusting her cap again, the second time she’d made the gesture in about as many minutes. _What a charming little_ habitude, the Marquis thought to himself. _But perhaps I should not have bowed quite so much in the style of court._  “The Marquis was asking to meet some of my men and see a little bit of the camp,” Hamilton explained. “I was telling him that you are a particularly good person to know here.”

 

Miss Frances blushed. “You’re very kind to say so, Colonel.”

 

Hamilton brushed aside the blush with a practiced hand. “Miss Frances, when she is not being humble, assists us as a nurse, and a needlewoman. You admired my new jacket the other day -- that was her work. An exceptionally fine _couturière_.  She is also the reason more of my men do not look like brigands from all their scars -- she is practically a surgeon! You must come to her if your clothes need the least bit of help. But, ah, tell me, where is ....everyone?” Hamilton asked, glancing around the tents for a sign of the rest of his brave band of men.

 

“I think my father has his men out on drill, sir,” Miss Frances explained. “He was not pleased with their handling of the guns since the new replacements have come on, and wished to run them through their places again until the rate of fire improved.” The look on her face implied that she rather agreed with her father’s assessment of the rate of fire. “Where the others are I could not say.”

 

“You speak as if you could do better,” Gilbert observed with little-hidden amusement in his voice. The dark, bright eyes, caught his own with startling directness.

 

“I could, sir. I know the drill as well as any man. And I have fired the gun, too.” She realized hastily that she was speaking to, respectively, her father’s commanding officer and a titled peer, and how this must have sounded to the both of them and added, “When my father was struck at Trenton, not as a...a matter of general practice.”

 

“A woman, on a battlefield?” The Marquis wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or seriously impressed.

 

“It is hot business to run a gun -- I was on the field with the watering party,” She explained.

 

“Each gun carries a bucket of water with, to swab the gun in between charges so that the powder does not catch fire. In the event that there are any flames left from the preceding charge,” Hamilton explained with all the gravity of a master craftsman explaining _les petits détails_ of his trade. “If the battle is very heavy, the water needs to be replenished quite often. And the gunners, too, need a drink from time to time.”

 

 _Sensationnel_ , Gilbert thought to himself.   _A woman scarcely older than me with more experience of battles_ . He thought he might like to know this _jeune fille_ a little bit better.  “The courage and fearlessness of American men is well known in France, madam -- I shall have to inform my friends at home that it is matched by that of American women,” he complimented generously with a smile.

 

Another blush -- what humility! When Adrienne blushed Gilbert found it rather annoying, but this girl’s cheeks were _charmant, absolument charmant_ when they were _en rouge_. “You are...very kind to think so, sir. I only do my duty.” Her glance darted quickly over to the laundry, and the Marquis perceived that she was rather anxious to finish her chores before the return of her father.

 

“Miss Frances, you have been most kind -- but we should not detain you any longer. I imagine you have a great deal of work to do. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He bowed again, with a little less style this time, and tried very hard not to smile when she ducked the same plain curtsey as before.

 

“And yours, sir. If you need anything, you must ask. I know that any man here would be happy to help you.”

 

“I shall bear it in mind.”

 

She retrieved her laundry and beat a hasty retreat back to the shelter of the tents, the two men watching her go with vague interest. “A very good woman to know,” Hamilton repeated, nodding to himself.

 

“And she is unmarried, still?” the Marquis wondered aloud. Surely, a woman of her skills, who was already in camp --

 

Hamilton laughed at this. “As I am sure it is in France, sir, there is the matter of her father  -- and it does not help, I think, that hers is the man who aims and fires the guns.”

  
Gilbert joined his companion’s laughter, and had to admit that Hamilton’s point was a very good one indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, after reading the results of truth_unversally_acknowledged's charming TURN shipping game, in which she matched me with Lafayette on the (sadly accurate) basis of my constant and unyielding optimism, *someone* got an idea for a little scene that absolutely wouldn’t go away. (I decided to pick on Hamilton’s Artillery because that’s the unit a friend of mine reenacts with and with whom I have hung out with on a few reenacting occcasions – and Alex Hamilton is just kind of fun to imagine as a tour guide.) 
> 
> And, you know, it was Saturday, and I happened to have a spare hour or…two. Don’t judge me.
> 
> I hadn’t actually gotten up to Lafayette’s introduction in season two, so this first scene (in fact, the first three or four chapters of this story,) were written with seeing Brian Wiles’ interpretation.) 
> 
> Regardless, the idle production of a Saturday afternoon was, to my surprise, well received, both by the woman who inspired it and others. And the idea refused to rest. One scene turned to two, two scenes to four -- and Margaret Frances, good, God-fearing Yankee maid that she is, refused to be easily seduced. And the story grew. And Gilbert refused to let go.
> 
> So now there is this.
> 
> I feel it is always incumbent upon me, as a writer in a historical fanverse, to acknowledge that I do try to learn the history I am subverting before I overwrite it. So, to begin, I state: the Marquis de Lafayette was madly in love with his wife. 
> 
> Any village idiot reading his letters home can see this. They are wonderfully tender, full of good humor, and wildly optimistic about the events unfolding around him. (You see easily why she matched me with him.) One gets the sense, reading these missives, that Lafayette was a person trying his hardest to be genuine and authentic -- and, somehow, succeeding. However -- however! -- throughout his life his name was linked with all manner of women, and he had the reputation, according to some authors, of being quite a charmer. I will play on that a little here. Any other slanders to his otherwise good historical character are to be blamed solely on me. (And perhaps the tiniest bit on Brian Wiles, who is absolutely adorable as Monseiur Le Marquis.)
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading about Gilbert and Margaret as much as I enjoy writing them. Hopefully this story can fill in some of the narrative space not covered by TURN. Next chapter to follow shortly.
> 
> Aussi -- S'il vous plaît pardonnez-moi ma pauvre usage de la langue française. Mes excuses. Je n’ai pas utilisé mes français depuis le lycée.


	2. Parte Deux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert is determined that he will get his own share of glory in this war -- he just wishes that glory didn't have to hurt quite so much. If one's nurses, however, are as charming as this one, he might consider getting hurt more often...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose I should note that this drabble contains fainting, a somewhat severe wound, and several swigs of very bad wine. Not in that order.

Recklessness had not always necessarily been a part of Gilbert de Motier’s life. As the orphaned son of a deceased cavalry officer, and the heir to a sizeable estate, there had always been a large number of people perfectly prepared to make his life’s decisions for him – at thirteen to buy a commission, at sixteen to enter into marriage – to a girl already approved by his family, no less – and at seventeen to join the Masons. So far he had been well served by the decisions of others, and had no reason to begrudge them their control over his early years.

But the simple fact was that running away to America was one of the first decisions Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, had made completely of his own accord, and he was drunk on the power that decision-making was bringing him. 

Previously the only consideration left to him had been his clothing – a personal statement and a powerful one, but lacking a certain…dignity of spirit and purpose. Now the whole field of life lay open to him – where to visit and who to meet, what to read and who to discuss it with, whether to ride to battle or hang back in the rear-guard.

As if that last answer had ever been a suggestion!

When he had heard that there was a scouting party of dragoons going out to examine the extent of the enemy’s advance, it was only natural that he should ask to go (and absolutely unthinkable that the poor captain in charge of the party should refuse to let a major general accompany them). And of course, it would only follow that he would be in the very thick of the action when the scouts came across another party of the enemy’s scouts and engaged them, whether the poor captain wished him to be or not.

It had been a quick thing – the enemy had been repulsed, the din had been glorious, and now the Marquis and the rest of the company were riding back to camp with the general assortment of cuts, bruises, and blows that one usually sees after a light cavalry engagement.

The Marquis was just sliding down off his horse, ready to tell Planchet about his latest adventure when one of the dragoons, glancing over at their temporarily seconded Major-General, cried out in great agitation, “Sir, your arm!”

Lafayette looked down to see that the entire left sleeve of his jacket had turned a rather dark and ominous shade of red, the stain emanating from an equally large slash through the jacket itself. He was suddenly aware that his arm was, in fact, in a deal of pain, a sensation hidden up to this point, doubtlessly, by the strong rush of enthusiasm to finally be in battle.

“You are in need of a doctor!” the poor man exclaimed, undoubtedly imagining what fresh punishments would rain down upon him and the rest of unit when it was discovered that not only had they allowed a valuable and highly ranked ally to ride into certain danger with them but that they had further allowed him to be badly injured while doing the same.

“But I am perfectly–” Suddenly the ground beneath his feet seemed to rock uncontrollably, and he held an arm – his good arm – out to catch himself against his horse. A poor choice, as the animal took the opportunity to side-step and nearly let his master fall squarely on his face.

“Will someone take the Marquis to the surgeons?” The captain called out. “Corporal Garrick, if you would be so kind?”

“Ask for Hamilton’s surgeon – Desmond. He should have room.”

“Come on, sir,” an anonymous voice spoke just outside the realm of Gilbert’s sight, taking his good arm and wrapping it around his own shoulders. “It’s just a cut, it looks like. You should be fine after they’ve stitched you up.”

Even Gilbert, in his weakened state, could see that there was quite a large number of men receiving treatment in the tents of Doctor Desmond, the surgeon attached to Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton’s artillery, though they had not been in battle for quite some time.

“If you’re looking for Mr. Cadwalder, he’s a few tents down,” a woman’s voice said. “Isn’t he the regimental surgeon for the Dragoons?”

“I was sent to find Doctor Desmond,” the Corporal insisted. “It’s for the – “

But the corporal didn’t have to finish his sentence – Gilbert recovered enough of his sensibility to look up at their interlocuter and found himself in front of a familiar face, one that let her jaw drop and exclaim “General Lafayette!”

“Miss Frances,” The Marquis said, pleased that he’d remembered her name. “I pray you will do me the honor of dealing with this… _blessure triviale_.”

Miss Frances glanced at his arm and nearly stepped back in frank shock. “And he walked here?” she asked the Corporal, shamelessly ignoring her patient. “How long has it been since he received this?”

“An hour, p’raps,” The corporal replied. “Didn’t seem to notice anything till he got down off his horse.”

“Right. You’ll want to take his coat off. And his hat, and wig as well. Don’t worry, Marquis, they’ll be returned to you – I”ll make sure of it.”

“Aren’t you going to fetch the surgeon?” the corporal asked nervously.

“Doctor Desmond is away from camp this evening,” the young woman said evenly. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle just as well as the Doctor. Now, set him onto that chair while I fetch my things.”

Corporal Garrick didn’t look very pleased by this turn of events, but he did as he was told and eased the coat off of Gilbert’s shoulders, a process that took longer than it would have had Planchet been in attendance – and his arm been free of major injuries. The wig and the hat were easier, though he was mindful that his own hair, cropped short to help the fit of his wig, made him look terribly derangé.

Returning with a small box, Margaret Frances knelt down next to the chair and examined the wound with a cautious eye. “Well, that’s a relief. A sabre-cut – wide and quite deep, but nothing serious. I’ll wash it and sew it closed and you’ll have a fine story to tell all the ladies back in France.” She smiled and returned her attention to the shredded upper upper section of his shirtsleeve. “Now, I’m going to see if any of your shirt is still in the wound. If anything’s left in, it will fester and suppurate. This might hurt a bit,” she added, her gaze apologetic.   Taking a pair of finely tipped silver tongs in hand, she gently probed the wound, pushing back a little of the loose skin. Gilbert felt his vision flash again, and felt himself falling forward, only to be caught, moments before falling out of his chair, by Miss Frances. “A glass of wine, I think, to fortify the blood,” she prescribed. “Can’t have you fainting on me, Marquis.” She set the tongs back down and rooted in her box for a moment before coming up with a leather-bound canteen. She drew the stopper out and offered it to him.

Gilbert sniffed a moment, the habit of many years, and, finding his sense of smell almost gone, (he was certain the container wasn’t full of blood, which, along with burnt bone, was about the only sensation his nose could detect at the moment) took a generous swig before handing it back. The liquid, a red rotgot only barely worthy of the word ‘wine’ burned like quickmatch going down his throat but woke him up well enough to recover himself and sit back again against the chair.

Miss Frances studied him a moment. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like Corporal Garrick to hold you steady? He’s waiting outside.”

He shook his head and took another deep breath. “No, please, Miss Frances.  I have already taken too much of your time – There are others waiting.”

She didn’t look like she believed him, but she carried on regardless, taking up the pair of pincers and examining the wound again. Not trusting himself to close his eyes, he blinked and stared very fixedly on the opposite side of the tent, trying to ignore the sharp haze of pain radiating from her attentions.

“Nothing – good. “ She sat back for a moment and returned her pincers to her tray, reaching for the needle. It glinted wickedly in the light and Gilbert felt his vision dim again. “I’m afraid that was the easy part,” she apologized again. “More wine?”

He nodded quickly, not trusting himself to speak, and gratefully took another swig. When this is over, Planchet is going to bring her a whole bottle of good wine, he thought to himself. He handed her back the canteen and caught her glance before nodding again. She gave him a long concerned look and then reached over and pulled out a small fold of leather, heavy with the imprint of the last user’s teeth. Gilbert glanced at the needle again, and opened his mouth, letting her rest the gag on his tongue and take hold of it experimentally with his teeth. “Just remember to breathe,” she said with another apologetic smile. “Through the nose – deep breaths.”

Biting down, he nodded again, fixing his gaze on the far side of the tent again and counting his blessings that it was only a cut and that he would not have to lose the arm. The needle sank into his skin, and Gilbert tried his hardest not to scream, biting down hard against the leather pad and trying to steady his breathing. _One – two – three –_

But by the time the needle passed through his skin a fourth time, the darkness had descended again, and he was falling…

When the Marquis woke up, the light had changed and he found himself staring, not at a tent wall, but a tent roof, looking upwards. He glanced down and saw that his arm was bandaged. _I must have fainted_. So much for the martial honor of the Lafayettes. _But where did your father’s honor get him, eh? An early grave._

He realized, staring at the tent-walls, that it was not early evening any longer but well past nightfall, the general atmosphere dim save for the light of a single tin lantern, hanging from the ridgepole of the tent. He was not the only man lying in recuperation, though the rest of the fellows here looked in much worse condition than he.

And, a few beds over, a familiar face was checking on her patients. “Feeling better, Mr. Stevens?” Margaret Frances asked, kneeling down next to one of the pallets and the man who lay there. Gilbert saw that he had not been so lucky – one of his sleeves stopped abruptly past the elbow, the stump heavily bandaged.

“Tolerable, Miss Margaret,” the man said with a rasping voice. “Could do with one of your hoecakes right about now.”

She at least smiled at that. “Doctor Desmond’s been keeping me very busy here – I haven’t had time to bake any. Perhaps in a few days when you’re feeling better.”

“Miss Margaret, I…I can’t seem to reach my cheek to scratch it. My arm ain’t working properly, y’see. That surgeon fellow says he’s going to fix me up, though. Any chance you could…”

There was the slightest change, only the slightest, in her expression, trying to hide her pity and doing a fair job of it.  “Where does it itch, Mr. Stevens?”

“Right under my eye, there.” He waited, patient as a child, as the young woman reached across his face and gently brushed away at the skin underneath his eye. “Much obliged, Miss Margaret.”

“You’re very welcome, Mr. Stevens. Any time. Now, try to get some sleep.” She rose from his side and glanced around the tent again. Gilbert caught her eye, and she smiled – actually smiled! – to see him.

“And you, Marquis? Are you feeling better?”

“I should apologize most profusely, Miss Frances, for my stubbornness. I should have made you bring Corporal Garrick back. I only hope I did not cause you any harm.”

“You’re not the first man I’ve had to catch mid-faint. It’s nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix,” she promised stoutly, glancing around the tent again. Gilbert studied her decided expression and realized there was a great quantity of stubbornness in this woman, and a great, great dedication to her work.

“And will you get a …good night’s sleep tonight, Miss Frances?” He asked gently, almost certain of her answer.

She looked back at him as if she wished he hadn’t been quite so perceptive. “Time enough for sleeping later,” she responded curtly, all business again. I thought not.

“Your friend Mr. Stevens, there,” Gilbert asked, making sure his voice was lower than before. “He doesn’t…”

“No,” she replied. “He doesn’t know. His other arm’s nearly useless as well – broken. The doctor can set it, but there’s a chance it won’t take. And I think he’s got a fever, now, too. If he survives all that, he’ll be …lucky.” She didn’t believe the word, even as she said it, and Gilbert had to agree – a man missing one arm had a hard enough time in the world, never mind a man missing both. It would probably be better if the fever took him.

“I should go,” the Marquis said, trying to sit up and finding himself overcome, almost immediately, by a wave of nausea. “You have other men – “

“I’m not sure I could get you back to your tent by myself – Corporal Garrick had to help me move you here.” she gestured to the pallet on which he was lying. “Your man – Planchet? – stopped by to bring a blanket, and take your wig.” She smiled at the memory. “He wasn’t very pleased I’d taken it off and not put it on a stand – it had gotten a little… flat. I had a hard time explaining we don’t get much call for wig stands in surgery.”

The image of Planchet getting _enerve_  about a silly matter like his wig when there were men losing arms made Gilbert want to get up and give his valet a piece of his mind. “I shall make him apologize _immédiatement,_ ” he declared sharply, trying to rise from bed and finding himself prevented, once more, by the coming nausea.

“I’ve heard much worse than him, sir,” Miss Frances assured him, easing him back down onto the cot with a firm but gentle touch. “Now lie down, and don’t even think about getting up until you’ve slept a while. Your body needs time to heal just as much as any other.”

Defeated, Gilbert laid back down and made a conscious effort not to move. Sleep, however, evaded him, and he spent the next half an hour merely watching the progress of Miss Frances around the tent. There were some ten or twelve men in total, and she made some gesture to them all – a sip of wine, a cursory glance at a bandage, a tuck in a blanket so that a poorly clad toe (its stocking more hole than weave) would not turn blue in the night air. When she was convinced that all was well, she settled into a chair near the flap of the tent and drew a ball of yarn and a pair of needles from her bag – knitting of some kind. _A stocking for that cold foot, perhaps?_  

Gilbert suddenly wished Adrienne would knit him something. A silly notion. His wife was a lady of the first rank, and the homely American art of knitting would have hardly been included in her education, extensive though it had been. Still, there was something…comforting, about the idea that someone would make something just for you, knowing that it would be useful, and being comforted knowing that it would be a comfort to you. Perhaps the American soldier’s uniform was ill-matched and ill-fitted, but at least he was loved. Even the greatest armies of Europe, with all their pomp and splendor, could not boast half so much care in the production of their clothing as the Americans could. And that was what Gilbert loved.

She glanced up for the briefest of moments, and her gaze met his, her smile almost immediately replaced by a somewhat-amused frown. “Sleep,” she mouthed, making no secret of her  impatience with him, and Gilbert, thinking it rather pointless to resist, closed his eyes and tried to think of what he would tell _le General_ when he asked tomorrow where he had spent the night.


	3. Parte Trois

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gilbert is still in trouble, very bored, fond of taking walks and the poetry of classical antiquity, and rather entranced by a certain young woman doing laundry.

After the business of the scouting party, Gilbert found himself in a world with a great many more rules. He was not to attach himself to any scouting party without the express permission of _le General_ and the commanding officer of the unit. He was not to leave camp without an escort. And he was certainly not allowed to participate in any activity that might re-injure his arm.

His enthusiasm, however, remained undaunted. He had written triumphantly to Adrienne detailing the circumstances of his wound and the glorious thrill he had felt riding into battle.

In the aftermath, however, he found himself spending long stretches of time in his tent with nothing to do, except write home, or record in his diary the various drills and meetings he had attended that day. Without a command of his own there was precious little for him to do – one notable exception being listening to the constant tirades of his valet, Planchet.

Planchet had been one of the Marquis’ servants since he had been married – a highly trained member of the De Noailles household staff, he had been transferred to the young Gilbert’s employ when  Lafayette and Adrienne had married. His conduct in all things was exemplary, but, without the commodious facilities offered by the family apartments at Versailles, the Marquis was beginning to see another side of his servant seldom offered to masters back in France.

As Gilbert was finding to be a usual occurrence, Planchet was grumbling. _“Filles du diable…saloperie…putain de merde…”_

“Planchet, what is it now?”

The valet came in from the exterior of the tent still mumbling curses under his breath. “Our…fine excuse for a laundrywoman has ruined yet another of your shirts!” He brandished a piece of the Marquis’ body linen, which now had a large and alarming burn across the front. “And she has done none of the darning, when it was discussed – _à maintes reprises_ – that she should do it. So now there is even more work for poor Planchet, after fixing your new coat, and trying to get the blood out of the old one, and there is so little hot water and my brushes are practically –”

“Planchet,” The Marquis stopped the valet’s never-ending cavalcade of complaints with a sharp voice, trying to remember what it was like to be patient. “I have other shirts. We can get other brushes. The coat can be mended.”  He paused in his letter to Adrienne – much easier than writing the infernal thing, he hadn’t anything new to say since his last letter home a week ago  – and considered for a moment. Planchet would need this problem of the laundry solved or he would very quickly lose all usefulness, and that was not something the Marquis was prepared for at the present moment. He could ask one of the other officers – Hamilton, perhaps – who did thier linens, and then –

 _Idiote!_ As usual, he was making this too complicated.

“Planchet,” he announced. “You will go to Colonel Hamilton’s camp and ask for Miss Margaret Frances.”

“Does this…Mar-gar-ette Fran-cees do laundry?” Planchet asked petulently. Gilbert resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Other valets would have assumed that their master, asking for a woman in the middle of the day, were perhaps more amorously inclined, but not Planchet. And of course, he would not link the name with the _batarde idiote fille d'un agriculteur de pays_ who had ruined his master’s wig. A fact for which Gilbert was most grateful.

“Yes, Planchet, _en fait,_ she does. I have it on good authority she does Colonel Hamilton’s shirts.” Gilbert wasn’t sure if this was true or not, but Planchet had a great respect for the well-dressed people of the world, and Hamilton, with his sharp sense of _la mode actuelle,_ was practically a god. “You will ask for her terms, and you will give them to her.”

“Sir, these …. _blanchisseuses_ are all crooks! They charge exorbitantly and do only the meanest – ”

“Whatever she asks, Planchet,” Gilbert repeated, returning to his letter and considering the matter closed. He glanced back at his letter, and found, much to his pleasure, that he now had something of which to inform Adrienne.

_You will be pleased with me, my dear – I have taken the domestic matters you cannot advise me on from my present position into my own hands and have just engaged a new laundress! She is a young woman of excellent character attached to the company of Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, of whom I have spoken several times previously. Planchet is very pleased with the change, for he has been having a hard time finding reliable help…_   
  


Finishing the letter with a few more domestic bits, Gilbert looked at it and sighed. Should he have mentioned Miss Frances? There were some things, he thought, that wives should be spared reading in letters home from their husbands on distant shores, and other women were at the top of the list. He had made no mention of her in writing home about his wound, and he wondered, now, if it were not a better idea to strike that part of the letter out and recopy it afresh.

He had no way of knowing what his wife’s reaction to his letters was. She had not written in reply – or if she had, the perils of the North Atlantic were keeping her letters far away from him. Doubtless she missed him – Adrienne was hopelessly devoted to her husband. And Gilbert, too, was devoted to her – or rather, he had been, before setting out for America.

Adrienne had been one of those things in his life he had never questioned. She had been put forward as a candidate for marriage, and he had accepted, and they had simply moved forward from there. It had never occurred to him that he might have chosen someone else, that he might have waited a few years to see what natural inclinations arose in his own heart towards some of the women at court.

There was little enough he could do about it now – they were married and that was an end to it. They had a daughter, Henriette, and he was reasonably sure in one of his wife’s letters she would soon be telling him of the arrival of another child. But he could not help wondering, now, as he sat in his tent in the wilds of Pennsylvania, if his life would be any different if he had waited to marry, if he had found another mate. And his mind kept springing back to the image that had filled his eyes before dropping off to sleep of dark-haired, bright-eyed Margaret Frances, sitting in her chair, keeping watch and knitting.

 _Impossible_! He was the son of one of the oldest families in France, and she was the daughter of an orderly sergeant. But this was America, wasn’t it? The Land of Possibility, of equality and freedom, where even the bastard sons of outcast men could raise themselves up into statesmen?

Gilbert found his legs inexpressibly restless and decided a walk was in order.

He had been restricted from leaving camp with the scouting parties, but they had not yet barred him from leaving camp on foot – a small blessing, since an army at rest is a beast that requires a strong stomach to bear. Gilbert could not remember the encampments of his youth being quite so…fragrant. Every so often a man’s nose needed to smell something different.

Thankfully, Washington’s fall quarters in Pennsylvania offered some very pretty countryside which lent itself perfectly to long walks on otherwise boring afternoons. Gilbert already had several favorite paths – one that took him near a local village, another that lead to a heavily wooded stand of trees, and still another that followed a little stream a good number of miles.

He had never been fond of walking at home – but then, walking at home usually meant a turn about the gardens with his wife, or some of her friends, talking of the topics of the day – colors and frills, feathers and crinolines, who had seduced whom and who was angry about it. Inconsequential rubbish. Servants walked – nobles strolled, or else took a carriage.

But there was something purposeful in using one’s own feet to move from one place to another – and it was wonderfully convenient when one did not have use of the carriage. Gilbert fancied he had even lost a bit of weight – not that his indulgences at table of late were what they had been at home. And one saw so much more of the country when the carriage did not block one’s view – or frighten away the birds before one had a chance to look. He was becoming quite the naturalist – there were a half a dozen species he knew on sight, though he had no names for them yet. Perhaps, if Planchet would undertake the journey, he might go to Philadelphia and inquire from the booksellers there as to whether a satisfactory book on the flora and fauna of the area had yet been produced.

A strange sound rippled through the slowly-changing foliage and made Gilbert stop a moment, studying the path ahead. There it was again! And it was certainly not a bird. Following the noise back through the trees towards the river, Gilbert went up a short rise and stopped, peering down from the safety of the trees on the riverfront path where it passed a little shallow point in the river, home to several large rocks.

Rocks, it looked like, that were just of a size to help with laundry.

It had not been a bird that he had heard earlier, but a woman, laughing. Or, as it turned out, several women, ranging in age from ten or twelve to stout matrons of forty, all of them with their petticoats kilted up to knees and some without the niceity of jacket or gown to cover their stays. Adrienne would have never even considered going out in public without a hat, let alone so crucial a part of her garment as her jacket. But then, Adrienne was not a camp follower. She had not even wanted to come to Metz to visit him while he was out on training exercises and had been promised a room in the local chateau. These women were of a different class of being, one that was loud and boisterous and given to crude jokes at the expense of valets who spoke poor English. (Lafayette had been subjected to a large number of tirades from Planchet on the outspoken creature that was the American laundrymaid.)

“Margaret, are you nearly done yet?” someone called, and one of the women, knee-deep in the river, turned towards the bank.

“No, I’ve still got another basket to do. You can go home if you wish – I’ll finish alone.” That voice! Gilbert’s heart leapt up in his chest – the esteemable Miss Frances. He tried to ignore that the river had gotten into a great deal of the lower fabric of her shift, which was now clinging to her legs in a most distracting manner. He decided he had misjudged her. She was not, in fact, an angel of mercy sent by God to do good works, but rather something more antique and bold, a water spirit, a kind of naiad, bewitching the stream to do her bidding.

Nymphs and dryads and other denizens of myth he had in plenty on his walls at home, but suddenly none of those compared with the tableau before him – the whiteness of the shirts upon the rocks and the caps on their owner’s varied heads, the glint of the water and the shade offered by the surrounding trees, all framed out for the discerning interloper’s eye. Was this what the great Odysseus had come upon, washing ashore in Phaecia, the sound of women’s laughter and the sharp slap of wet cloth upon the rocks? It was a shame, he thought, that art had not obliged him on this charming scene before now, and wondered what this particular Nausicca would do to the next wild-haired traveler who wandered in from the woods.

It took him a moment to realize that the conversation had shifted, and they were speaking now of – of him? He strained closer to listen, mindful that the trees did not offer a substantial screen to hide behind, in case of discovery.

“Whatever did you do to that Frenchman earlier, Peggy? He left camp looking like he’d stepped in horseshit.” _Planchet,_ Gilbert thought to himself.  “Hot, fresh horseshit,” someone else clarified, to general laughter. (He did tend to have that expression sometimes, his master admitted privately.)

“Took his money and bid him good day,” Margaret said with a smile, coming back to the shore for another item to wash. “He’s the Marquis de Lafayette’s valet – he wants me to take on his lordship’s laundry.”

The other girls made varied sounds of appreciation. “And why should he turn up his nose about it? Does his lordship have golden waistcoats or something?” one of the others asked dismissively. “Let him do his master’s own washing if he doesn’t like us.”

“I think he’s just overprotective, is all,” Margaret said with a smile, surveying the next item to be washed with a critical look on her face. “His master is an important man, and looks are important to him.”

“And what would you know about it, Margaret Frances? You’ve only met the man once!”

“And it sounds like once was enough!” one of the others chorused merrily, making the others laugh.

“That’s not true – I’ve met him twice. Once when he was viewing the camp, with Colonel Hamilton – and the second time when I stitched his arm up the other day,” she explained simply. “The Marquis, not the valet.”

Another round of  appreciative noises. “Oh, la-di-da!” someone exclaimed. “Is it true what they say about the French, Margaret, that they’re terrible proud and haughty about everything?”

 _Am I?_ Gilbert wondered to himself.  “I thought he was quite nice,” Margaret admitted. “He apologized for taking up my time. He was very grateful.”

“Grateful enough to ask you to do his laundry,” one of the older women pointed out dryly, making the others laugh. “That’s not much for gratitude, if you ask me. Should have paid you.”

“Should have taken you back to France to his fine house!”  Another interjected with a loud laugh.

“And what would I do there, Dorcas? Swan around and eat sweets?”

“It would do me!” Dorcas replied tartly, eliciting more laughter from the assembled women. “Better than freezing your feet off in Pennsylvania!”

“Haven’t you got work to do at home?” Margaret asked pointedly.

“Come on, girls, let’s leave Miss High and Mighty to her lordship’s dirty smalls in peace!” one of the older women said. “We’ll tell your mother where you’ve got to.”

Eventually, the babbling crowd left, and the naiad stood alone in the water, scrubbing vigorously at her latest stain, singing some kind of song as she went about her work. Gilbert’s English was improving daily, but there was something about singing that eluded him. A pretty voice, though, from what he could hear of it. He watched, fascinated, as she worked her way methodically through the rest of the laundry, finally climbing out of the river when she’d beaten the last shirt dry.

 _Come on, man, speak to her!_ He would lose his chance if he delayed much longer – she was turning back towards the bank and climbing up onshore, wringing out her petticoat and untucking its folds from where she had belted them uparound her waist, the better to keep them from getting totally wet.

Gilbert clambered over the bank and pretended surprise. “Miss Frances!”

She nearly fell over, her footing generally a little unstable with the wetness of her feet. “General!”

“My apologies,” He added hastily, helping her to her feet. “I have disturbed you.”

“No, no, it’s…it’s quite fine.” But her arms remained crossed over her chest, and she seemed to be singularly focused on making herself as small as humanly possible.

 _Idiote!_  Here he was trying to have a conversation, and she was half-dressed. A cloak lay, neatly folded, near the riverbank, beside several baskets of what he knew to be finished clothes. “You are cold, Miss Frances – permit me to fetch your cloak.” Within two steps he had retrieved the garment and presented it to her – she wrapped it around her shoulders very tightly and seemed to lose a little of the tightness in her arms, though the way she held it around her reminded him he would have to be very careful about his distance. “I wished to – to thank you again for your help, the other day. I can only say I am very glad Doctor Desmond was called away when he was.”

“I was happy to help.” She studied the ground around her feet, unsure of what else he could have to say.

“Did…did Planchet find you, earlier?” he asked, trying not to be too distracted by the sight of her feet, bare and slightly blue, stark and white against the grass.

“He did, yes.”

“It will not be too much trouble, do you think? The laundry? I realize you must be very busy.” He made a pathetic gesture towards the waiting baskets.

“Not at all. And my father will be glad of the income,” she added off-handedly, smiling apologetically and shrugging a little. Gilbert must have looked a little scandalized; she glanced at him and laughed a little. “You disapprove of talking about money,” she accused.

Now it was his turn to look ashamed. “You must forgive me, Miss Frances; it is not considered polite in France to speak of…of income.” Even less so for ladies to worry about it. Adrienne hardly pays it any mind. Except when she’s spending it.

“I am afraid that is one thing you must get used to in America, General. Here it is considered perfectly proper – and it is even expected, if you are a merchant, or a man of property. One would hardly think a man sufficient in his trade if he could not boast about the number of ships in his fleet, or the size of his warehouses.”

“You speak very easily about the ways of men of property.”

“I wasn’t always a laundress, you know,” she drew herself up a little higher. “My father was a clerk, before the war. For a merchant in New York. He had high hopes for us.”

“Us?”

“My sisters and I. I have two – both younger.”

Gilbert nodded. “What…changed?” he asked, trying to imagine what horrors would have induced a man of good name and standing to drag his family out into the countryside with an army and place them amid the lowest people imaginable. He had not yet met Sergeant Frances – was the man perhaps a drunk?

“New York burnt,” she said flatly. “When the British came. The warehouse – my family’s home.  My father had been a member of the militia before the war; his sympathies were well known. He had no employment, and we had no place to stay. An island full of Royal soldiers is no place for homeless young woman with Patriot fathers,” she observed candidly, catching his gaze with a determined eye. Gilbert was again reminded of phrase straight out of long hours with his Greek tutor – _oxen-eyed_. He’d never fully appreciated the image of a woman’s eyes being as dark and deep.   _Ill luck to the man who tries to take me as a prize of battle_ ,  that gaze seemed to say. “When he left to join Capta– Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton,” she corrected, “and his company, we followed.” She shrugged. “My father was always so determined his daughters would not be someone else’s maids – but we do as needs must. So yes, General – I will be proud of earning income if it means my family eats.”

It was such a lot to know, the whole story of a person’s life. And that it should be so marked by misfortune made knowing it worse still. He was torn, wondering whether he should offer sympathy (but she would take none of it – he did not know much about her but he could guess that well enough) or tell her of his own losses, his father at the age of two and his mother – but that would be presumptuous. She would not wish to know of his his life – his disadvantages,  in comparison with her own, would seem very inconsequential indeed.

“You must think me very rude, to ask all this.” Gilbert offered, wishing, at the same time, that he could stay and ask her more.

Her gaze was discerning and frank.“Only a little strange,” she admitted finally. “Most officers do not care about who does their laundry. Only that it gets done.”

“I came to America because I wished to learn more about the ideals and the principles of your great colonies. But one cannot learn principles without knowing the people who practice them. And if there is one thing I have learned since coming to America, it is that even a laundress can be a person of importance. Even your Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton has …low origins, and he has raised himself up. I would be honored to count you as an acquaintance, Miss Frances. Half the peers of France have not your capability.”

She stopped and stared at him. “Do you …really mean  all that?”

“Is not honesty a virtue of your men of property, Miss Frances?” Gilbert asked, trying not to be too playful in his manner, as he might do with one of Adrienne’s _copines_ at Versailles. Was she unused to compliments?

“Well, yes, it is, but…most…” she was struggling to find words for what she wanted to say, and finally, rolling her eyes and sighing, gave up. “It was a very pretty compliment, General. And one I am unworthy of, I am sure.”

Gilbert considered for a moment asking her to use his first name, and then reconsidered. She was too polite to take such a liberty. But perhaps he might allow himself one more impertinence. “You also have a very fine voice, Miss Frances.” _And fine eyes, and fine hands, and, if I am not deluding myself, a very fine derriere,  too._  She looked up again, more than a little shocked. “I…I heard you singing, earlier,” he explained. The shock remained. “Are you averse to compliments, Miss Frances?” he found himself asking.

“Not the compliment themselves, General – only the expectation that always seems to follow with them.” Judging she had already said too much, she hastily bobbed a curtsy, bid him good day, gathered up her baskets and began a well-timed and purposeful walk back to camp, one load of laundry balanced on each hip, not even bothering to look behind her.

Gilbert watched her go, still admiring the view offered by her exit, and, when she was out of sight and certainly out of earshot, allowed himself a sigh. Did they have women like that at home? He was certain he hadn’t met any.

That night, wrapped up in bed with a cup of wine at his elbow and his dog-eared copy of _L’Odyssée_ , lingering over Nausicaa and her handmaids admiring Odysseus, Gilbert’s mind kept pulling him back to the shade of the trees and the shine of the river offered by his memories of the day’s walk, and he drifted off to sleep content with dreams of a shipwreck, and a shore like that one, and the tender charms of a bold, dark-haired, oxen-eyed nymph, who pulled him down into the water and ravished him without a second thought for shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies, as ever, to the French (Je m’excuse), classical scholars everywhere (Mea maxima culpa) and to the Marquis, who loved his wife about as much as he loved America – that is to say, to the point of distraction. 
> 
> Linda DePauw, in her book Revolutionary Mothers, relates a somewhat funny story about the relationship Washington had with the 'camp followers' as they were often called -- the women who followed the army to perform various menial (and traditionally feminine) tasks like cooking, nursing, and, yes, laundry. (Yes, some of them were prostitutes. That was NOT their primary role.) Many of them were families of the soldiers who were following the army because they literally had no where else to go after towns were burnt or farms repossessed by one side or the other. At one point, early on in the war, DePauw tells her readers that the men's clothing was falling apart on their backs because the men were too -- I'll use the word 'proud' here, but 'gender-role focused' could work too -- to do the washing and mending themselves. Washington wasn't particularly fond of the camp followers, and actually spilled quite a lot of ink telling his officers they should be kept in good order on marches, and not allowed to ride in baggage carts, but at the end of the day, an army in clean clothes and eating reasonably hot meals is generally a healthier one, so they were allowed to stay. 
> 
> To everyone's benefit, I'm sure.


	4. Parte Quatre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News from France – the alliance is official! And everyone is celebrating – except Gilbert, whose mind is all little over-occupied by something (or someone…) else.

The whole camp was alive with the news, the wonderful, long-hoped for news that France was joining the fight against England, and the man who had brought it was not out celebrating.

 

Oh, Gilbert had made his official rounds earlier, uniform immaculate, waving and smiling and accepting all the grateful praise a whole camp full of soldiers who were tired and almost to the point of exhaustion could be bestow. But he had not accepted any of the officers’ entreaties that he join them for a night of wine, women and song, saying, instead, that his journey to Boston had left him feeling tired. Which was true, more or less. He was tired. Tired of being a figurehead, of being ornamental. Every day there were scouting parties and sorties and what had he done? Drafted reports. He wanted to be in the action, wanted to be in the crowd, not above it. It was why he had fled Versailles and sailed all the way here, wasn’t it?

 

“Right, you’re going out.”

 

Gilbert looked up from his book to see the smiling, excited face of Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton appear in his tent. “Monsieur ‘amilton, I have already…”

 

“Already turned down the others? Yes, I heard. And you’re right -- drinking with a bunch of old tosspots is not a way to celebrate. We’re going into the camp to celebrate with the men.”

 

Gilbert looked at his uniform jacket, hanging up so Planchet could brush and press it later, and wondered what it would do to the men to have their festivities interupted by their officers. Alex followed his gaze and shrugged it off. “Not like that,” he said, tossing a ball of cloth in Gilbert’s direction. The Frenchman caught it, confused, and unfolded it until the shape of a jacket emerged -- plain, homespun cloth in a country style. _Tres inelegante._ Hamilton threw another object at him -- a knitted cap, of the kind common to sailors and working men. Gilbert looked up at his friend in surprise.

 

“ _Déguisé?_ ” he asked, just a little interested. Hamilton nodded, his eyes aglow.

 

“It’s the perfect night for it.”

 

Gilbert glanced at his uniform coat and then at the prospect in front of him, so tempting now that he was actually holding it in his hands, of merely being part of the crowd, invisible and without expectation.

 

Alex smiled, the self-assured smile of the man who knows when he’s won. “You know you want to,” he said, smirking.

 

 _God help me,_ Gilbert thought to himself.

 

Twenty minutes later (and with no help from Planchet,)  two badly clothed but otherwise rather handsome young soldiers emerged from the Marquis de Lafayette’s tent, sneaking around the fire to the back of the officers’ tents and away into the rest of camp proper. The main event of the night was over, but that in no way meant that the festivities had ceased. At every camp fire there was an open bottle and the sound of voices raised in song, toasting the French, the King (Louis, that is), Washington, Congress, and a whole host of other entities. Gilbert even heard his own name mentioned once or twice.

 

It was terribly liberating, being one of the  men, a nameless entity without a title or an expectation of behavior. Hamilton, even, seemed more at home here, cap pulled down rakishly over his reddish hair, swilling rum with the men at the first fireside they passed.

They were headed, Gilbert realized, for Hamilton’s camp. Mentioning this to his friend, the man shrugged. “It’s dark! No one will see me -- and besides, everyone’s as drunk as a lord! They’ll chalk it up to bad wine and forget about it by tomorrow!”

 

Gilbert had no answer to that, and so followed, not at all surprised to find their eventual destination was in the very heart of the tents housing the artillery. Drawing close to the fire, they could hear a toast being drunk -- presumably to the man who’d supplied the spirits.

 

“Fine stuff this is, Brewster!” someone applauded, lifting his tankard high. “Will you not tell us where you got it?”

 

“Not until I see coin for more in my hand, Sergeant!” The man Brewster responded in kind. “And speaking of which, you’ve not paid for this lot!”

 

“You’ve not asked!” Laughter all around. “What do you want for it, then?”

 

“Aye, see, that’s the rub -- there’s nothing you’ve got that I want!” More laughter. “Unless you’re willing to part with Maggie here.” Brewster, a bearded man with a battered, slouched hat, wrapped his arm around the young woman at his side and surveyed her with a pleased eye. The firelight changed, and Gilbert had to stop himself from charging headlong into the circle of merrymakers and wrestling the woman away. It was Margaret.

 

“You’d have a bad bargain of it,” Bill Frances (her father? That smallish man with the mustache? He didn’t fit the picture she’d painted of the former clerk.) “I don’t think she’d keep you!”

 

Brewster turned to the woman in question, his arm still heavy around her shoulders. “Well, Maggie Frances, what do you say? Will you run away from your father with me?”

 

She was smiling, caught up in the whirl of the evening. (Surely she didn’t like him, to smile like that!) “What, run away with a man who thinks I’m only worth one cask of grog? I’m worth at least four.” That, too, got a round of laughter, and Brewster pulled away, playing the dejected lover with remarkable aplomb.

 

“And four of finest madeira, too. Well, she’s too expensive for me, Bill. You’ll best keep her. A song, then, instead of a marriage proposal,” Brewster replied. “It’s a fair rate.”

 

The others picked it up, too, and Gilbert got the impression that Margaret’s impromptu little concert down by the river was not an uncommon occurrence. “Aye, a song, Maggie! A song!”

 

“If I’m going to sing, Lieutenant Brewster, then you’re going to share my shame and sing with me,” Margaret declared forcefully, garnering another laugh from the waiting circle of faces.

 

“Fair enough -- though my voice’s not half as pretty as yours,” the bearded man shot back. “Do you know ‘Charming Billy?’”

 

She laughed, and, smiling, sang out what must have been the first lines of the song, her voice clear and just as lovely as Gilbert remember it down by the stream.

_Where have you been all the day,  
Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Where have you been all the day, me Billy Boy?_

 

And then, answering her back, Brewster, out of tune and clearly enjoying himself, laughing even as he sang.

  
_I've been rolling in the hay with my charming Mary Grey.  
And me Mary kittle me airy, oh, me charming Billy Boy. _

  
It was a mischievous song, especially for a man to ask a woman to sing -- an interrogatory, Gilbert thought it was called, a series of questions asked from one singer to another, this time about a woman and her particular graces and talents. Particularly funny, in this instance, to the audience because of who was singing it -- Miss Frances, the marriageable young maid, and Lieutenant Brewster the wild-looking smuggler.

_Is she fit to be your wife, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Is she fit to be your wife, me Billy Boy?_

  
_She’s as fit to be me wife as the fork is to the knife. And me Mary kittle me airy, oh, me charming Billy Boy._   


When they finished, there was clapping and toasts all around, and Lieutenant Brewster stole a kiss from his singing partner, which (Gilbert was pleased to see) she gave him a good shove for, albeit a playful one.  The attention around the fire turned to someone with a fiddle, tuning up for a lively dance tune, but Gilbert’s attention followed Miss Frances, who was still speaking to Brewster. “I’ve always heard it sung Nancy Grey, Lieutenant,” she admitted. “Or is Mary Grey the version they sing on Long Island?”

 

“There’s a girl at home named Mary,” The blond man who had accompanied Brewster said. Was that Washington’s ADC? Yes, Gilbert rather thought it was. Tallmadge, that was his name. The spymaster. The man had a curious choice of companions, if Brewster was a close friend. “Passing fair, I seem to recall.”

 

“Oh, passing fair? Let me just knock your head about till you can see better then, eh?” The burly smuggler locked his arm around his friend’s shoulders to deliver the promised beating, but Tallmadge was too quick, and too used, Gilbert was sure, to his friend’s style of fighting.

 

“And what does she think about you proposing marriage to me, Lieutenant Brewster?” Margaret wanted to know, her voice carefully inquisitive.

 

“Yes, what does she think about that, Caleb?” Tallmadge asked, clearly still baiting his friend. “Do tell.”

 

Caleb’s expression was suddenly a little less boisterous, obviously considering the idea that this Mary, whoever she was, would not be pleased. “Well, the less we let her know about that, the better it’ll be,” He replied quickly, a storm gathering in his face.

 

Margaret exchanged an amused look with Tallmadge. “And you, Major? Is there a special girl at home for you, too?”

 

He shook his head. “No one that’ll mind if I ask you to dance, Miss Frances,” he said gracefully, taking her hand and drawing her into the figure of the dance, spirited and drunken though it was.

 

She looked so fearless, laughing and spinning in the firelight, still so much in tune with the image Gilbert had formed in his head of dryads and naiads and other spirits from the ancient world. And suddenly, Gilbert was jealous. Jealous of Tallmadge, dancing with her, and of the man Brewster, with whom she seemed quite friendly. The wine on which he’d been working was strong stuff, and it was going to his head, all these weeks of inactivity when his whole soul cried for combat and deeds of action. And he was moving away from Hamilton’s side, and pushing his way through the crowd, and waiting, until the figure of the dance brought them around again, and stopping them, and speaking.

 

“May I?” Both the Major and Margaret turned, and it was hard to see who was the more surprised to see him -- Tallmadge, for whom recognition dawned slowly, or Margaret, who seemed to know exactly who he was when she broke away from her partner.

 

Behind them, he heard the man Brewster crow in anger. “Hey, the only one who cuts in on my friend --”

 

The major held out his arm to stop his friend, his eyes fixed on Gilbert. _He knows me._  “Caleb, it’s fine. It’s fine.” Tallmadge nodded to Gilbert and stepped back, taking the angry form of Brewster with him, evidently to explain, away from the fire and in hushed tones, exactly who the interloper was. He could almost hear the conversation now -- _My superior officer. A Major General. A Marquis._

 

Well, he hadn’t wanted a scene -- and now he almost had one. “Will you do me the honor of a dance, Miss Frances?” He worked hard not to bow as he said it. He didn’t know what the American custom was, in situations like these, but it couldn’t be all that different from the court in France. She looked as though she were ready to melt into the ground, but she did not refuse him, taking his hand for a spin around the fire. But the spark was gone from her eyes now, replaced by a wary smoulder that watched him carefully at every turn and would not have let him steal the easy kiss that Brewster had. (How much he would have liked to take that kiss! And others, too, if she would let him.)

 

Her hand seemed to burn his every time it touched, and when, in the course of the steps, his eyes lost sight of hers, he could still feel her watching him. _Does she watch me like I watch her?_ He wondered. He couldn’t tell.

 

The song ended, replaced, quickly, by another rowdy tune that Gilbert didn’t know, and for a moment the two of them simply stood there, unsure what to do next. “Thank you, Miss Frances,” he said quickly, and fled the fireside, whispering a hasty apology to Hamilton as he passed.

 

What had she said, when he has asked her if she disliked compliments? _“Not the compliments themselves, General -- only the expectation that seems to come with them.”_  What did he expect of her? Not the roll in the hay that Brewster’s song had asked for  -- or was that implied, since he was an officer and she a mere laundry maid? Was that all he was allowed to ask for, a quick, half-hipped fumble in the dark? He knew there were plenty of women in camp eager to make accommodations of that sort, (for the right price, of course) though he’d never availed himself of their service. (In the camp's inebriated, joyful state, he was sure they were doing a roaring trade this evening.) But Margaret Frances wasn’t one of them. He knew that, at least. She was too proud. Or was her anger caused by something different --- that he already had a wife? _Has she asked someone about me?_ He wondered.

 

_If I was the man whose coat I’m wearing, I could ask her. But I’m not._

 

His head was heavy and over-warm with drink, and he needed, desperately, to be away from all of it -- the laughing, spinning crowd, with its over-merry greetings and toasts and talk of victory.

 

He was not feeling quite so victorious as the rest.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, dear. Poor Gilbert. He really doesn't have it easy in this story, does he?
> 
> I have done something very selfish in this chapter and self-referenced another work of mine, Once More to Part From You. Caleb Brewster *does* have a girl at home in Setauket named Merry (short for Merriment) and if you think she'd mind him proposing marriage to another girl, you're absolutely right. (If you are enjoying Margaret's can-do-will-do-done attitude, she and Merry are close cousins in that regard.)
> 
> You can listen to my favorite version of the song 'Billy Boy' with the original lyrics here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU3pLw2eljE
> 
> Also, while I'm thinking about it, a note on the story's title: The idea of a 'fille du regiment' is a French one, coming out of the 18th and 19th century when women would follow the army selling food, small necessaries like soap, and doing laundry. (It is also, as Google keeps reminding me, the title of an 1840 opera by Donzetti.) And, again, it doesn't necessarily mean a prostitute. These women are also sometimes called cantinieres or vivandieres, and are often depicted in pictures or cabinet cards as wearing a feminine version of the unit's uniform, making them look a little more like a mascot or a cheerleader. I think of Margaret in that sense -- liked and respected by everyone because of her added value to the unit, and decidedly 'off limits' to romantic advances both because her father is the sergeant and because she's already more like a sister (or a daughter) to the men rather than a potential wife. Which could get a little lonely, after a while, don't you think?


	5. Parte Cinq

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the celebrations of the French alliance, Gilbert is taking a walk to clear his head and making some new friends, who might prove strangely useful to him in the future.

Gilbert awoke the next morning to blinding sunlight and a splitting headache -- the sad effects of a night spent carousing when he should have been sleeping. He ran a hand through his hair and, haltingly, sat up, feeling his head swim. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the mid-morning light, silently rejoicing when a particularly fast cloud slid in front of the sun outside and dimmed heaven’s lamp a moment. His borrowed jacket lay bunched in the corner of the tent where he’d thrown it, his cap and shoes also scattered haphazardly throughout his quarters. Evidently Planchet had not been in to clean -- probably because he’d been doing a little celebrating of his own. 

 

He knew of no meetings today -- no staff rides, no troop reviews, nothing. A wise decision, probably, on the part of the Commander in Chief, as most of the men (and a good number of the officers) were probably not in a fit state to fully participate in such endeavors.

 

A walk, he decided. A large glass of appropriately weak wine to calm his aching head and then a walk. That should set him right.

 

He glanced at his uniform jacket, pristine where Planchet had laid it yesterday, and then at the sorry excuse for a coat he’d left to wrinkle on the floor. Stepping out of bed (and wincing as he did so), he fished the coat from where he’d thrown it and  shook it a little in an attempt to discharge some of the wrinkles.

 

It had been comfortable, slouching around with Alex last night in these borrowed clothes. For what seemed like the first time since he’d arrived in America he had not felt so self-concious, so bound by rules and expectations that he could not act as he saw fit.

 

Not that his judgement had been at its best -- Gilbert remembered the look of fear in Margaret’s eyes as they danced in the firelight and sighed. That was a problem he did not think he was going to easily solve. He glanced again at the jacket, considering. It wasn’t as if Alex was going to be asking for it back soon...

 

Ten minutes later, face washed and stomach fortified with a cup of very watery wine and the remains of a loaf of bread, Gilbert, knit cap in hand, stuck his head out of the tent, looked around to see that no one was about to see him leave in his borrowed, and took off in the direction of the river for a very long walk, jamming the cap over his distinctive, close-cropped red hair.

 

The sun and the summer breeze were very bracing, and it wasn’t long (some two or three miles out, perhaps) before Gilbert was feeling very much recovered from his antics last night -- in mind and body, certainly, though his heart was still a little sore. Perhaps this would be one of those great romances like Dante had for Beatrice, or Plutarch for his Laura -- best observed from afar.

 

When his stomach started growling he turned around and headed back, better able, now that the fog of alcohol had fully cleared, to appreciate the sun on the river, the green and yellow of the grass growing on its banks and the birdsong in the trees. A country idyll of the best kind. Let the Queen keep her Petit Trianon, her little palace of cleaned and varnished pastoral dreaming -- Gilbert would take the real country any day it was offered -- even when he had to narrowly avoid horse-shit on his walks. He could tell when he was getting closer to camp -- the relative frequency of such deposits was getting higher. He stopped following the river edge and took a detour through the woods, a path he was beginning to know almost as well as the river.

 

The relative silence and calm offered by the trees was a welcome change -- albeit one interrupted, suddenly, but a chorus of loud, childish voices -- two boys and a girl, playing near a fallen tree. Or were they playing? Gilbert stopped his walk to listen, watching the two boys dangle something just outside the girl’s reach -- a rag, perhaps? 

 

But no - it was a doll. And they were clearly trying to keep it away from her -- to the girl’s great distress.

 

“Give it back!”

 

The boys laughed. “Oh, and who’s gonna make me? Silly little girl, playing with her dollie. Don’t you know we’re fighting a war here? This here's _our_ campsite, and you're  _trespassing._ ”

 

“Give it baaaa-ck,” the little thing plead, jumping and batting her arms trying to retrieve her plaything. “Pleeease!”

 

“Maybe we should take the dollie and go show it how to march, huh? Or show it what happens to traitors and let it hang!”

 

“That’s what General Washington does to spies, you know. Hangs them.” 

 

“And lets them rot,” The other one added for relish. “Why don’t we let her rot?” And, so saying, he tossed the doll up into the branches of the nearest tree, far too high above the ground for any of the children to reach easily.

 

“NO!” The little girl cried in anguish, eyes filled with tears. “Don’t hurt Celia!” 

 

Gilbert’s heart broke. He’d never had any siblings of his own, but he’d spent enough time with Adrienne’s younger sisters and his cousins to know the strong bond that existed between a girl and her doll. Adrienne still had a few of her old dolls in a box in their apartments, for ‘when Henriette was old enough’, beautiful things with china faces and elaborate dresses. This doll was not one of those, a cloth form with an inked-on face and limp arms, wearing a soot-stained dress and a tiny little apron, its hair ragged pieces of brown linsey-woolsy tied back with a bit of ribbon. A well-loved thing, truly -- and no fit target for a boy to hurt. Mind decided, he strode up to the scene and cleared his throat behind the boys imperiously. 

 

“Don’t you ‘ave some work you should be doing?” He hated that his voice hitched over the ‘h’ in have, but that letter would elude him so. “Fine strong boys like you ought to be ‘elping thier fathers, not teasing little girls.” He fixed on his most serious scowl and decided he might need a bigger stick to prod the message home. “General Washington would be ashamed of you. This is not the behavior of young gentleman -- or young officers.” They had mentioned Washington -- perhaps they held him in high regard, as he did?

 

That seemed to do it -- the boys, chastened by the invocation of the Commander in Chief, picked up thier wooden guns and limped back to camp, casting dirty looks behind them as they went. Gilbert half-climbed into the tree and carefully retrieved the doll from where they’d thrown it, brushing it off tenderly and handing it back to the little girl, who took it carefully and hugged it close for a while before remembering her manners and, glancing at Gilbert, said “Thank you” in a very small voice. She studied him a moment, as if assessing his intentions,and then, deciding he was trustworthy, said, “My name is Kitty. And this is Celia.” She held the doll up to her ear as though listening for a secret, and then disclosed, “She says thank you for rescuing her from the tree.”

 

Gilbert had to smile and tried very hard not to laugh. “You are very welcome, Celia,” he said, as sincerely as he could. “My name is Gilbert.”

 

But they did not proceed much further on introductions, for at that moment there was a shout from nearer the river, and Gilbert’s attention turned.

 

“KITTY! Kitty, didn’t we say…” Two girls were coming over the riverbank, dragging a basket between them, strong creatures of perhaps sixteen and twelve, the elder looking particularly put upon to be chasing her sister hither and yon. “Kitty, I told you to stay close! We didn’t know where you’d gone!”

 

“I was building Celia a house,” Kitty explained, sounding hurt that this should not be abundantly obvious. “We were going to sit and play house and then Willie and Jamie Tanner came and kicked it over and called me mean names and said Celia was a spy and they were going to hang her and then he came and told them they were being bad.” She glanced up at Gilbert with a serious smile and nodded. 

 

“You should not have wandered off!” The elder one repeated. “There were sticks down by the river that you could have built a house with. My thanks to you, sir, for helping my sister,” she added, for Gilbert’s sake, bobbing a half a curtsey. “She is young and does not know better.”

 

“My pleasure,” Gilbert said, feeling like he’d seen the young lady somewhere before. 

 

“We should get back to camp,” The middle one said, glancing around nervously for signs of the boys again. “The Tanners will be back. With a big brother, probably.”

 

“Let me walk you back,” Gilbert offered, feeling generous. 

 

The oldest looked scandalized at the suggestion that she would need help and shook her head. “Oh, sir, please, that’s very kind, but --”

 

“Bella,” the middle one cut in, looking around, still nervous. “The Tanners…and we’ve finally got everything  _ clean. _ ” She was looking nervously at the large basket between then, which contained a good deal of freshly laundered shirts.

 

“It’s no trouble,” he offered again.  “I was a young boy once, too,” he added. “I didn’t like being told I was wrong -- they _might_ come back.” 

 

The oldest did not seem to want to take him up on this offer, but the middle one’s desperate gaze and the youngest’s pitiful clinging to the doll seemed to do it. “Thank you, sir,” she said, picking up her end of the basket again. “Come on, Sarah, I can’t carry this on my own, it’s too big.”

 

“Allow me,” Gilbert offered, taking the handle and lifting it easily. Bella, the oldest, looked thankful, and picked up her own end without further comment.

 

The girls, he gathered on the walk back, were Arabella (or Bella) the oldest, Sarah, the middle child, and Kitty, the baby of the family. (Kitty was short for something, but he was not yet familiar enough with English names to know what it might be.) Their father was in the Army, and thier mother, too, was here in camp, and they helped out with the laundry. 

 

“You talk funny,” Kitty observed plainly as they walked back to camp, following in her sister’s quick strides with a galloping kind of walk.

 

“Kitty, that’s unkind,” Bella corrected.

 

“I wasn’t born here,” Gilbert explained with a patient smile. “I didn’t learn to speak English like you did.”

 

“Where were you born, Mr. Gilbert?” Kitty asked, still skipping and hugging Celia close.

 

“In France,” he explained, watching the camp come closer into view. The basket was getting rather heavy, and he was beginning to better appreciate that Margaret could carry one of these on her own.

 

“Like Mister Planchet!” Kitty realized with a grin. “He’s from France, too! He works for the Mar...Mar..” Her mouth contorted, trying to force out the long and foriegn word with little success.

 

“The Marquis de Lafayette,” Gilbert said carefully, wondering how they knew Planchet. (But surely there were not so many bad tempered French valets in camp. He was proabably very recognizable.) Kitty nodded furiously. 

 

“He’s a  _ noble _ ,” she explained, happily sharing another peice of her knowledge. “Papa says we shall never have nobles in America, because they are Very Bad Men,” she added, feeling proud. “But he says the Mar-kee is not a bad man, that he is a good man.”

 

“He is a very good man,” Gilbert couldn’t help adding in, admiring her father for his sound republican principles.   Kitty’s eyes lit up.

 

“Do you know the Mar-kee, too, Gilbert?”

 

“I do,” Gilbert declared, feeling very liberated from himself as he did so.  _ I know him better than any man alive.   _ “And I know Monsieur Planchet, too. We work together.”

 

“You do?” Kitty was amazed. “So you must know my sister!”

 

“Does your sister work for the Marquis?” Gilbert wondered aloud, thinking, privately, that perhaps she were confusing him with someone else. 

 

But Kitty did not make time to answer, running ahead into camp, and announcing, very loudly and with great relish,  “Mama, mama, we brought home a friend!”

 

“Goodness me, Kitty, please don’t say it’s a frog again,” a middle-aged woman, who Gilbert had to guess was her mother, said baldly, wiping her hands and rising from where she’d been bending over the fire with another woman whose face Gilbert could not see.

 

“No, he’s a Frenchman like Mr. Planchet and his name is Gilbert and he rescued Celia from a tree where the Tanner boys threw her because they thought she was a spy and Gilbert came and told them off and Bella got angry at me and he helped carry the laundry home.”

 

Her mother gave an odd look at her child and tried to decipher everything that she’d just heard while Kitty leapt over a box at the fireside and tugged on the other woman’s arm.

 

“Margaret, Margaret! This is Mister Gilbert, and he works with Mister Planchet, too.”

 

The other woman turned around at the fire and Gilbert felt the bottom drop out of his heart as Margaret Frances stared back at him in utter shock.

 

“He rescued my dollie from a tree!” Kitty put in helpfully again. 

 

“That... was very kind of him,” Margaret said, after she’d remembered how to speak, still staring at Gilbert as though she’d seen a ghost.

 

“Mister Gilbert, this is my sister Margaret,” Kitty explained happily. “She works for the Marquis and does his laundry!”

 

“Very nice to meet you, Miss,” Gilbert said with a bow, not missing a single beat. Margaret continued to stare, unsure of what to do, until her mother, coming up behind her, noticed her daughter’s silence and gave her a short smack with the back of her fingers in the upper part of her daughter’s arm.

 

“Margaret, mind your manners! My apologies, Mr…”

 

“Du Motier,” Gilbert replied, realizing he hadn’t given his last name. For once in his life he was grateful that his Christian name was so long that people on this side of the ocean had stopped saying it, content to call him the Marquis de Lafayette and dispense with all the other business. 

 

“Mister Motier. We’re a little at sixes and sevens today, on account of the party last night for your master. And some of us,” she glared at her eldest daughter here, “were out late with the dancing. And Lieutenant Brewster’s ale.”

 

Margaret looked a little mutinous at being spoken to so, but kept her tongue behind her teeth and turned back to the business on the fire -- what smelled deliciously like a stew. His stomach growled ferociously, and he seriously regretted not finding a more substantial breakfast before setting out on his walk.

 

“Here,” Mrs. Frances said kindly, “you should join us for dinner. The least thanks I can give for helping my daughters.” She observed her oldest daughter’s rising surprise and glared furiously. “I don’t want it said that Anne Frances was a poor host -- or an ungrateful one. Please, sit. My husband is at drill today and won’t be home, so you’ll use his bowl and spoon.”

 

Since it seemed he had little choice in the matter, Gilbert sat gingerly down on one of the stumps next to the fire and watched the two women finish their preparations, as the two youngest girls went for the spoons and bowls, passing them out carefully, and Bella went to retrieve some bread to eat with it.

 

His bowl, he noticed, was the first filled, the stew rich and fragrant. Then came Kitty’s, Sarah’s and Bella’s -- Mrs. Frances and Margaret waiting to serve themselves last. For a while, no one ate, and then, Gilbert realized, they were all watching him for a cue to begin. He picked up his spoon and tentatively shoveled some of the stew in his mouth, immediately regretting it when he discovered how hot it was.  _ Idiote -- it did just come off the fire, not up three flights of stairs. _ He smiled in discomfort, and swallowed the whole mess as carefully as he could, a lifetime spent getting spoons across the knuckles for spitting out what he didn’t like coming in most useful.

 

He did not make the same mistake twice, stirring his soup several times to try and cool it before taking another bite. It was delicious. (But should he have expected anything else from Margaret? Was there nothing at which she did not excel?) Far better than anything Planchet might be making at home for their luncheon, that was most certain.

 

“Have you worked for the Marquis long?” Mrs. Frances asked politely, after he’d eaten a good deal of his soup.

 

“My whole life, it seems,” Gilbert said with a smile, meeting Margaret’s eyes for a moment and hoping she would smile at the joke. She didn’t.

 

“It’s funny, Margaret’s never mentioned you before,” her mother observed off-handedly, looking at her oldest child with interest.

 

“I...do a lot of errands for Monsieur,” Gilbert said quickly, improvising as he went. “Carrying messages. I’m not often around the camp. And Monsieur Planchet handles all my lord’s personal things, like laundry.”

 

This seemed probable enough to Mrs. Frances. “Ah. Is he a nice man, to work for, the Marquis?”

 

_ Well, am I? A nice man to work for? What do you think Margaret’s said?  _  “He has his good days and his bad days -- the same as any master, I suppose,” He responded with a shrug. 

 

His hostess nodded. “My husband says it’s a fine thing, what he’s done, coming over from France to help us.”

 

“He believes very strongly in the cause of  _ liberte,  _ “Gilbert admitted truthfully. “He was overjoyed to be able to show his support in this manner --and is very happy that his King has seen reason to support Monsieur Washington and your Congress. And I know...I know he wishes he could do more,” he added, studying the bottom of his bowl.  _ I do wish that, very much. I wish I could do more. But instead I sit in camp, and hope for battles, while other men take the worst of it.  _

 

“Can Celia sit with you, Mister Gilbert?” Kitty asked, bringing over her bowl and her doll. 

 

“ _ Mais absolutement _ , absolutely,” Gilbert said, moving over a little on his seat so that the doll might nest next to him. “Shall I share some of my soup with her?” He asked kindly. 

 

“She already had some of mine,” Kitty said solemnly. Gilbert nodded in perfect understanding and continued to eat, mindful not to tip the doll from her perch or accidentally sit on her.

 

It was the nicest meal he had eaten in a long time, and he would not have traded it for all the banquets of Versailles. He felt at home with the Frances family, though he had known them only a short while, put instantly at ease by Kitty’s childish welcome and kindness and helped by Sarah’s nervous smiles and even Bella’s studied carelessness. Mrs. Frances, too, was warmth and hospitality, filling his bowl twice and completely disregarding his pleas that he was quite all right with what had been given to him. And then there was Margaret. Margaret, who sat across from him for the whole meal watching warily, as he held long imagined conversations with Celia and Kitty and played peek-a-boo with the doll as her owner looked on in gales of giggles, truly believing that Gilbert, as he was pretending, could not see the doll at all when she was right in front of him. 

 

_ If only her sister was as easy to please,  _ Gilbert thought to himself, glancing up with a smile and realizing that the eldest Frances daughter had shifted, a little, during their meal, her shoulders softening and her frown relaxing a little. He thought he saw her smile, once, though she hid it quickly as his eyes slid past hers.

 

She made a show of cleaning up when the meal was finished, as Bella and Sarah went to fetch water for the washing up, and Gilbert excused himself, giving his thanks to her mother and quietly taking his leave. He had only gone past ten or so tents when he heard her voice behind him, running to catch up.

 

“Mister Du Motier!”

 

He stopped, taking a deep breath and turning to meet her. She looked a little dazed that he had stopped, and tried to let her thoughts catch up with her. “Thank you,” she said, breathing a little heavily. “For...helping my sisters, earlier. I don’t know what Kitty would do if she lost that doll.”

 

“I was...happy to help,” Gilbert said with a shrug. It was true -- he would have done the same for anyone. The opportunities simply never seemed at hand. She seemed to want to say something else, but would not speak -- and he wanted to stay, and hear her. “Your sisters are a credit to your good example, Miss Frances,” he found himself suppying.

 

She blushed at that. “You were...very sweet with them.” She looked at her own shoes, swallowing nervously. “I”m sorry about last night,” she said finally. “I didn’t...didn’t mean to be ...rude.” How desperate she looked, how out of place and...sad? Conflicted? Her face was hard to read -- he didn’t think he had a word, in any of the languages he spoke, for the expression he found there.

 

“You could never be rude, Miss Frances,” he assured her. “You were only surprised. As you should have been.” He scuffled his own toe on the ground and looked up with a sigh. “I expect you may see a...a dark colored jacket and a green waistcoat in my master’s next basket of laundry,” he explained sadly, rubbing his fingers along the cuff of the same jacket he was now mentioning. “He would very much appreciate if you could find them a new home. I think they have...outlived thier usefulness. He finds they are more trouble than they’re worth.”

 

She looked him up and down and, realizing to what he was referring, opened her lips and soundlessly closed them, before nodding. “I’ll see what I can do,” she replied.

 

“Please thank your mother again for the food,” he added, trying to remember his own manners. “It was a delicious meal. The best I’ve had in a long time.”

 

“It’s just stew,” Margaret said with a shrug.

 

“But it was the company, too,” Gilbert could not help but add, fixing her with a hopeful glance and hoping, against all hope, that she would realize what he meant to say. “Good day, Miss Frances.” 

 

And, turning on his heel, he walked carefully back to his own part of camp, wishing he could have kissed her serious, startled face, and hating himself both for causing her such distress, and wanting so badly to make it go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this ...is new. Anyone who followed the story on Tumblr will know that this scene wasn't part of the original narrative. But someone's comment on last chapter about Gilbert needing actions, rather than just words (thank you, Calamity Bean!) to help clarify to Margaret what kind of person he is made me write this. So Gilbert gets to rescue a doll from certain peril, and show he's just an average dude who goes on walks and is good with children. (And strangely endearing to mothers - You can bet Mrs. Frances asked Margaret what was going on there afterwards and made some comment about 'Why can't you find a nice boy like that instead of roustabouts like Brewster?')
> 
> I'm not super-thrilled with the Tanner boys, but they just needed to be onscreen for a few minutes, and sometimes I am lazy. However, we also got to meet Margaret's sisters! Close followers of the story may have noticed at one point I said that she had two -- she does, in fact, have three, all younger. (Mr. Frances lead a very interesting fatherhood.) And we finally meet Margaret's mom! Hopefully she filled in some gaps for why her daughter is the way she is.


	6. Parte Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert overhears something, and decides the time has come to take action.

Gilbert was just putting the finishing touches on a letter to a friend back home when he heard the voices outside his tent, watching the figures pass by the canvas wall and form a lovely silhouette in the afternoon light - three women, in the American style, one slightly rounder of figure than the other two, all carrying baskets. He watched for a moment, and turned his attention back to his letter, still listening a little as a kind of relief from the boredom of his tent. The matter of his command was still yet to be resolved (the subject of the other five or six letters he’d finished this morning) and his world was beginning to feel very small indeed.

 

"...saying is that he seemed like a very nice fellow, Margaret, and you could do a great deal worse. He has a good master, who trusts him with important errands, and he was kind, and very polite. And doubtless he is well paid for his work.  Wars don't last forever, you know."

 

"Mama, you are imagining things." Oh, that voice. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone now -- Margaret and her mother and sister were just outside, talking of -- of someone. A very lucky someone, it sounded like -- a candidate for marriage. Gilbert couldn’t help but listen in now, wondering what sort of man Mrs. Frances wanted for her daughter.  _ A kind, generous, wonderful man,  _ **_obviously_ ** _. The  _ **_best_ ** _ of men. Rich and well-landed and able to keep her comfortable. _ He disliked this man already -- on the slim provocation that he was certain ‘French Noble’ was not on her mother’s list of qualifications, thus excluding him.

 

"Perhaps he would not stay as a…. as a farmer,  but a...an innkeeper, or a clerk. I'm sure he has many talents. And I am  _ sure _ he liked you."  _ As any sane man would,  _ Gilbert wanted to add emphatically. 

 

"Mama..."

 

"Mark my words, Margaret, Mr. Motier would be an excellent catch.” Gilbert’s world stopped spinning for a moment and (if he had cared to notice) a large blot appeared in his letter, his pen frozen trying to listen. They were speaking of  _ him?  _ He didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened.  _ Frightened?  _ the martial part of his soul shouted indignantly.  _ What is this frightened you speak of? You imbecile, her mother is making your case for you! _

 

_ On false assumptions,  _ Gilbert reminded himself quickly, now listening intently to the conversation outside the tent.  _ She speaks of Gilbert Motier the servant, not the Marquis de Lafayette. _

 

“And if you want to scold me for wondering whether we might see him again, then so be it,” Mrs. Frances pronounced.

 

Margaret seemed out of tongue. "It's not...that I don't like him, Mama. Because I do. A little. I think." Gilbert felt his heart leap in his chest. A little! That was something! "But surely...surely it is folly, to project one's hopes upon a man. I hardly know him!"  _ Fair enough.  _

 

"That can easily be changed," Mrs. Frances pronounced with the air of an elected prophet confident of God's good grace on the matter. "Ah, Mr. Planchet." A fourth figure had joined the shadow play on the tent wall, short and a little rotund and very officious. (Did he always look down his nose like that? Gilbert had never noticed it before.)

 

"Mee-ssess Fran-ceese," Planchet pronounced, in that way of his that always made it sound as though their very existence in his life was a trial of the greatest magnitude. 

 

But Mrs. Frances would not be cowed. "I should like to have a word with you about our bill..." And the two of them moved off, talking in measured tones, of the price of soap and other sundries while the other two figures stayed put.

 

"What did you mean, when you said liked Mr. Motier a little?" A third voice -- higher than the first two. 

 

"Oh, Bella, I don't know," Margaret pronounced wearily. “What I said, I suppose.”

 

"Because he seemed to like you," Arabella Frances put in. Gilbert remembered immediately that he had liked Bella immensely. "He kept looking at you and smiling while he was playing with Kitty, and he looked so pleased when you ran after him to thank him. And he  _ was _ rather good looking."

 

"I am not sure I want pronouncements on men from a seventeen year old, thank you," Margaret said pertly, taking a deep breath.

 

Her sister didn’t seem to be having any of it. "Mama's right, you know -- you could do worse. And he  _ was  _ very nice. I liked him, anyway."

 

"Thank you, Bella," Margaret said quickly, with a tone that indicated the matter was now completely closed. “We should probably follow Mama, or I think she will end up very angry with Mr. Planchet.”

 

And then they were gone, ready to smother the impending clash of strong personalities doubtless unfolding somewhere else in camp. Gilbert stared at the tent wall and had half a mind to run after them, before realizing that there was little use for it. They had spoken of Gilbert the Servant, and he was gone, threadbare coat and all, packed in a laundry basket back to some other deserving soul who needed a coat. (He had kept the hat, though, for when the weather turned colder. It had been quite comfortable.) 

 

The Marquis could not well run after them. And the Marquis was all he had left. Gilbert stared at the page, ruined by the ink splotch, and sighed. Any thoughts he’d had on the letter at hand previously were gone. There was no use for it. He was going mad. For Margaret Frances, daughter of an artillery sergeant and some-time laundrywoman.

 

It was common enough in France to tupp the help. Several of his acquaintances, men and women, were well-known in their own circles to sleep with their servants, considering it a privilege of their position to be granted favors without asking first. “But we do ask,” they would all say. “And they say yes.”

 

_ Because they have no other choice, _ Gilbert had always wanted to say.  _ Thier only option is to say yes -- or if not yes, to lose their position. That is not free will -- that is worse than slavery, even, to give only the illusion of choice. At least a slave knows his own opinion will not be sought.  _

 

If he asked what he wished to ask of Margaret, she would say yes, because she did not know she could refuse without reprisal. And it would hurt her, more than he could stand to do. He did not wish to take what was not freely offered, nor offer what was not sought -- it was not in his nature.

 

_ So I cannot ask, and where I cannot ask, I cannot know! If I were some other man, some voice in the dark -- if I were merely Gilbert the messenger, then she might give me a true answer on what she thinks of me, and not the one she thinks I want to hear. And she said herself, she doesn’t know, yet. _

 

_ But she said she liked me a little! There is hope in that! _

 

He was remembering one of the plays he had seen with Adrienne before leaving Paris, a comedy in the current style involving hidden lovers, a prince in disguise and mistaken identities -- all the usual buisness. One character had left a letter on a chair, and another character, chancing upon it, assumed it meant for them. (It had, in fact, been meant for them, but then another character came and assumed the same, and it was then that the trouble started.) The lady who had written the letter had not meant for the object of her affections to see it -- but when he had, the news that she loved him had made him bold. 

 

Could such a device work for women, too?

 

Empowered, Gilbert sat up in his chair, pulling out a clean sheet of paper. He was resolute -- he would do it.

 

It was strange to him that it should be difficult to write to Adrienne, and yet so easy to compose the letter he wrote now. It was not long, neither was it complex, yet it was  _ his _ , entirely, and so easily and rapidly poured out of his pen he did not even have to re-copy it.

 

Letter finished, another problem presented itself.  _ How do I get her to read it? _

 

He could not give it to her -- that was too open. Leave it on the table? She hardly came in here. Send it to her? A courier could talk, and besides, couriers were expensive, and the province of wealthy men. That would give him away before he’d began.

 

Planchet came in from outside, holding one of the large wickerwork baskets he used to carry Gilbert’s dirty clothes. “Anything else for the laundry,  _ monsieur?  _ Miss Frances is outside to take this week’s.” He did not look pleased with this development, and Gilbert wondered for half a moment if Mrs. Frances had talked him around to a slightly different rate of pay. They had been gone quite a while. Not that it mattered to him.  He hastily folded the letter and stuck it in his pocket, afraid Planchet might see. “No,” he said dismissively, his hand still fast around the letter. “Nothing else.”

 

His valet nodded, picking up a few odds and ends from around the tent and stowing them in the hamper, until Gilbert realized that this --  _ this!  _ \-- was exactly what he was looking for. He would act quickly, or he would not act at all.

 

“Planchet, wait! My...my waistcoat.” Gilbert gestured to the inkstains on his clothing, caused by the too-quick movement of an over-eager pen, and began undoing the buttons. “Tell her this is silk, and it should be washed carefully,” he added, watching, pleased as the waistcoat, letter still inside its pocket, was packed, the offending stain face up, into the hamper with the rest.

 

“Anything else?” Planchet asked. Gilbert shook his head, watching, pleased, through the slit in the tent as his valet brought the basket outside. Miss Frances took it from him with an expressionless look, listening, patiently, to his entreaties about the silk.

 

And Gilbert allowed himself a smile.

 

The next day, as he was returning from one of Washington’s staff meetings, his servant met him outside the tent, expression stony.

 

“ _ La blanchisseuse est ici _ ,” Planchet announced icily.

 

“What, Miss Frances?” Gilbert tried not sound too excited, or too pleased. “What does she want?”

 

“She says she wants to speak with you,” Planchet repeated, looking effronted at the idea that a serving woman, a  _ laundrywoman,  _  would have the effrontery to ask for an audience with his master.

 

“In my tent?” Gilbert repeated. “Thank you, Planchet, I’ll see her  _ directement _ .” Planchet looked astonished, but made no move to stop his master’s progress, remaining outside while Gilbert lifted the tent-flap and stepped inside. (Was his hand shaking? And was it suddenly very hot? He found himself very warm.)

 

Margaret was waiting (in his tent! Was heaven so kind?) for him, her expression guarded, her very posture submissive.  _ This is a place that I do not belong,  _  her shoulders seemed to say, trying to minimize her very presence. Gilbert’s heart ached for her.  _ Woman, I would fill this tent with you if I could, if you would let me. _

 

“Miss Frances,” He greeted her genially, sitting down. “I apologize for the delay. Have you been waiting long?”

 

She bobbed a deferential curtsey. “A quarter hour, perhaps,” she replied, still ill-at-ease. It was, he realized with a jolt, the first time she’d seen him, spoken to him, since he’d eaten with her family.  “I...I found a letter, in the pocket of one of your waistcoats. I thought it should be returned to you.” She held it out, still tightly folded, and held, Gilbert could see, so that it remained closed. His heart dropped a little.

 

“You didn’t read it?” Did he sound desperate? He did not wish to sound desperate. 

 

“No, sir.”  _ Oh, God in heaven, that she calls me Sir. But she could not know it wounds me to hear it from her.  _  “I did not think it my place to. It was unaddressed; I thought perhaps it was a private correspondence of some kind. I did not wish to pry.” She held out the letter again, and Gilbert’s heart fell, wondering what he could do to bring about the conclusion he had so wished for. This was not how it was supposed to work at all!

 

“Well, give it here,” he managed, opening it up and looking with disappointment on the lines that he had so hoped she would have been able to read in the privacy of her own tent. (Perhaps when her hair was down, and she had taken off her gown for the day and was climbing into -- enough!)

 

And then it struck him. He would simply have to be bold and read it here. “Dear Pierre,” he began, in the manner of someone reading something aloud to remind themselves of something. “I thank you, friend, for your most recent note on the situation at court. I am glad to have missed these most recent scandals  -- you know, I think, that such doings bore me.”

 

He continued scanning, still reading aloud, unsure whether he could bring himself to meet Margaret’s eye. “But I have a scandal of my own to share  -- I think I have fallen in love. You will laugh at me; since you knew me in my youth you will say I am too easily lead to that state, but I have done much searching of my heart and it is true. There is a young lady in the camp of whom I have grown most fond, a flower of surpassing virtue and modesty and charm. You shall recall the character of Columbine in the opera -- most clever, most witty, most pursued Columbine the servant girl. I shall call this  _ inamorata _ of mine Columbine to you, for she is -- please do not laugh at me -- one of the servants here. But she is more than that, Pierre -- it was she who healed my wounds after my first foray into battle. (And yet she wounds me still. Life does like its jokes, does it not?)  She is the kindest of women and so patient, always willing to help whoever requires it. (Except me. But I cannot bring myself to ask anything of her except my laundry. I imagine each fold in my waistcoats to be a kiss from her. See how badly I am struck?) 

 

You will tell me I should speak to her, but I will not. She was not always a servant, and will take it badly. There are officers here, as in France, who want only warm beds.   But she is so much better than such things, and I am afraid of what she will think of me to speak to her of how I feel. 

 

So I must only write of it to you, and continue wondering how to proceed. Perhaps you will have some remedy for me.

 

Your friend, hereafter known as Harlequin.”

 

Gilbert finished reading and laid the letter aside, looking at Margaret for some sign, any sign, of her current thoughts. Her expression was conflicted, her shoulders tense. “Well?” he asked, hopeful.  _ This was not how I planned it,  _  he wanted to say.  _ This was not how I wished to tell you. But you cannot fail to know of whom it was I spoke, Miss Frances. You must see it was you. _

 

She swallowed nervously. “I only wish you hadn’t read it to me,” she managed to say. “I don’t think yo---the letter writer knows what he’s asking ...her.”

 

“Doesn’t he? He’s asking for love.”

 

“But I don’t think he knows what it will cost her to give it,” Margaret said hopelessly. “Maybe… maybe ...Columbine likes him back, but is ...afraid to say so.” She looked at him for a moment and then dropped her eyes, ashamed, uncertain. Gilbert, however, nearly leapt with joy.  _ Has she said what I think she’s said? _ The space of carpet between them suddenly seemed an expanse as big as an ocean, and Gilbert wanted so much to cross it and kiss her -- if only to let her know that she should not be ashamed. “As she should be. Men talk all the time of servants who go beyond their station. Because, as he says -- she’s a servant, and Harlequin is a...man of property and rank. Any association between them would be...unseemly. And suspect. People would talk. No, Harlequin cannot speak Columbine of this.” She was decided, meeting his eye and quickly wiping at her own.  _ Is she crying?  _

 

“Not even if he concealed it? Wrote her letters, hid them for her?” Gilbert asked, watching her closely -- so closely! -- for her thoughts, her feelings. 

 

How confused she looked! “She wouldn’t know where to keep them.”

 

_ So she would keep them! “ _ At court, ladies keep their lovers’ letters next to their hearts.”

 

She laughed with a little bit of desperation. “I don’t think the ladies at court do much laundry, General.”

 

“Perhaps Harlequin will find her a chest of her own, then,” Gilbert answered reasonably. “It could travel with my baggage.”

 

She looked so torn, so divided! It wounded him, to think that he had hurt her so. But at the same time, there was still hope for him!

 

“Harlequin must give the lady time to think about it, sir -- when he tells her,” she added quickly, as though they were still speaking of persons unknown to them. “It is unfair to expect an answer so quickly.”

 

“Of course,” Gilbert agreed immediately.

 

She looked as if she would say something else. “And you…” she paused again, considering the print on her dress. “You should tell your friend that I think Columbine is a very pretty name,” she announced, finally. “It...happens to be one of my favorite flowers. He has good taste.”

 

“I shall inform him immediately,” Gilbert said with a flush of joy. She nodded, quickly making her curtsey and turning to leave. 

 

But at the entrance to the tent she paused, and turned back, her movements slow and halting, as if there were some great internal struggle to make her hands and limbs do as she willed. She raised a hand to her lips, pressing her fingers there as if to cover some expression of grief, and then, her eyes meeting his, brought the hand away and pressed it with firm intentionality to the stack of his waistcoats she’d left on his traveling chest. Then she was gone.

 

Gilbert watched the space where she’d been for several minutes, pondering the gesture before mirroring it with his own hand. His fingers were cold  where his lips kissed his skin, and --

 

_ Kissed! _

 

He jumped up from his chair and sprang over to the waistcoat, seizing it and pressing it close. She couldn’t kiss him -- that would have strained her manners. But she could show him that she wished to -- and she had.

 

“Planchet!” he found himself shouting. “A bottle of wine!”  _ I wish to drink a toast to my success. And to Miss Margaret Frances -- who today has made me the most happy of men. _ __  
  


And, glass in hand (supplied by a perplexed Planchet, who was wondering what his master was doing drinking toasts at ten in the morning) he paced his tent, beaming from ear to ear, finally (unable to keep still) throwing his cloak on to take a very long and very pleased walk. It seemed his world hardly moved until he received his reply, a few days later, dropped near his desk when she returned with the laundry, written on cheap paper in a hand that shook terribly, unaddressed and signed only with a flower, hastily and inelegantly sketched.

 

_ You must forgive the hand that writes this -- the lap on which the desk is sitting shakes with nervousness, and will not be calmed. I have taken three walks to collect my thoughts and still sit down with nothing to say. _

 

~~_ Forgive me. This is hard for me to say.  _ ~~

 

_ Women talk often of men they cannot have. It is a past-time we pursue most easily, in our idle hours -- everyone has their favorites among the officers, declaring who they wish would smile on them, show them favor, ~~who we wish would -- but I should not be indelicate. I would not wish to alarm you~~.  Your name is mentioned often only in that you have a title, and a great estate, but I -- I have never said this aloud to another soul -- I have liked your smile. When you first came to camp, you smiled so. And I -- I selfishly wanted you to smile more, to smile at me. I did not think you would. When you asked me to dance, it was like a dream coming alive, and it -- it frightened me. It has been a long time since I have gotten what I wish for... _

 

He read the letter standing up, pacing his tent with unashamed elation, until finally he could bear no more, and sat back down at his desk to compose his reply, his own hand shaking a little, too.

 

_ Dear Columbine,  _

  
_ How you fill me with joy! I will love your letters no matter how badly they are written. My first name for you was Nausicca. When I saw you down by the stream, you looked to me more like the  princess in the poem than a mortal woman… _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much nail biting. Honestly, I have no other notes for this chapter other than that it involved so much nailbiting, and pacing, and much glancing at screens with pained expressions.
> 
> I'll just ...sit over here, being nervous for my little babies. Come find me when you're done. And be kind.


	7. Parte Sept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret arranges a secret meeting, and learns a great deal more about Gilbert.

Monsieur Shakespeare, Gilbert reminded himself often, had written that music was the food of love.  That, perhaps, had been true at some point, but the Marquis de Lafayette was finding that letters provided a rather more substantial meal than song. And even then, they were a poor substitute for the _person_ of the beloved, on whom a mind could seemingly subsist for days.

 

She had returned his first overture with a note, hastily written -- he had responded back with a letter that spanned a whole sheet. And then...nothing. He considered upending entire inkwells on his cuffs to give her an excuse, any excuse, to return to camp to claim them, but it appeared he did not have to resort to such desperate measures quite yet.

 

He was working through the onerous task of his other correspondence -- letters to anyone he thought could provide some assistance in the matter of his commission, which had still not materialized -- when someone cleared their throat outside the tent. Gilbert paused and frowned -- usually Planchet was on hand to deal with the matter of his receiving guests. His valet must have stepped out on another errand - hardly inexcusable.

 

“Come in,” he called, pushing his chair back from his desk to better greet his unexpected visitor and finishing his sentence.

 

When he looked up, Margaret was standing inside his tent, laundry basket in hand. “Marquis,” she said, quickly setting down the laundry and dropping a curtsey.

 

Gilbert looked around, wondering who she was afraid of offending when they were the tiniest bit beyond formalities. But this was the first time he had seen her since she had written her note and he had replied -- perhaps she was afraid of how it had been taken? Perhaps propriety was best. “Miss Frances.”

 

She smiled a little, and gestured to the basket at her feet.  “I have ...your things here,” she said, clearly wishing him to know something very important about this particular basket of laundry that she could not quite put into words, something that she did not want to risk Planchet finding. Gilbert nodded, trying to be patient while at the same time beating back thoughts of rushing from his chair and smothering her beautiful, anxious face in kisses. He was _quite_ sure they were not ready for that step _just_ yet.

 

“...I also have Lieutenant Colonel Hamiliton's clothes,” she added finally. Gilbert’s face was appropriately blank, searching his mind for what on earth she could possibly mean. Alex’s clothes? “The coat he lent you -- and the waistcoat,” she added, for clarification. Suddenly the image clicked -- the clothes Alex had loaned him, the clothes he’d asked her to get rid of. Gilbert the servant’s clothes. “I thought you could return them to him,” she added again. “They’re wrapped separately -- just here.” She pointed to the top of the basket, where a bundle sat, apart from the rest, wrapped in coarse linen and tied with a piece of common twine. “You should...tell him to check the pockets, before he puts them out to wash. He forgot a letter, last time.”

 

"I will be certain to tell him," Gilbert said, taking the separately wrapped parcel and setting it aside on his bed, away from where Planchet would find it to unwrap it and wonder at what it was. Margaret watched him do this, and nodded, decided.

 

“I hope you will forgive the interruption,” she said again, curtseying and ducking back out of the tent. “Mr. Planchet!” He heard her greet his valet with a frightened voice, scurrying away quickly and leaving the valet to step inside just after Gilbert had taken Margaret’s package and shoved it underneath the coverings on his bedroll.

 

“Miss Frances stopped by with the laundry,” Gilbert said, as though this were the most mundane thing in the world, returning to his letter and trying not to look too often at the package, now burning a hole underneath his pillow, where he was sure Margaret had left a note for him. Planchet looked affronted that the laundry had been delivered while he was out (And to interrupt his master with such trivialities! The scandal!)

 

The valet set to work unpacking the basket immediately, bustling around tidying the tent for what seemed like an age until the business of preparing luncheon finally grabbed his attention, and he stepped outside to deal with the fire, leaving Gilbert to spring from his chair and pounce upon the package, ripping it open with little-hidden interest and rifling through all the pockets until he found what he was looking for -- a piece of cheap foolscap, carefully folded into what seemed the smallest square possible.

 

_Colombine will be alone by the stream during the parade drill this afternoon._

 

A single line. Gilbert read it through three or four times, savoring the way she shaped the name Colombine until Planchet stepped back to the tent for something, and he was forced to pocket the note and look busy at his desk.

 

He forced himself through the rest of his correspondence and the midday meal, resisting the urge to pace like a caged lion until the appointed hour. Planchet was dispatched with a message that he knew would take him to the very farthest side of camp and keep him occupied, leaving his master just enough time to change his clothes and slip away to the woods to wait for Margaret as parade was starting.

 

She was already waiting for him by the rocks where the women did laundry, sitting on a fallen tree trunk looking very flustered indeed. She looked up as he approached, trying to smile and instead looking still more afraid.

 

“Hello,” she managed, rising awkwardly from her seat and resisting the urge to curtsey.

 

“Hello.”

 

“I fixed the coat,” she offered, making a gesture to his costume by way of a better greeting. “It had a tear, near the shoulder. I was surprised you hadn’t noticed.”

 

“I was a little distracted. And it was dark -- no one would have noticed it but Planchet, and he was not helping me dress that evening.” Gilbert realized how hopeless this made him sound (not notice a tear in a coat? Was he blind?) and stopped, also aware he was rambling a little -- a bad habit of his when he was nervous.

 

“I see.”

 

The breeze disturbed the branches above them with a stirring sound, and in the silence that followed they could almost hear the commands of the parade field.   _God, this is awful,_ he thought to himself. If only love affairs could come prearranged. _I shouldn’t have come!_

 

Why was it when he was alone and in his tent he could think of a million conversations he wished to have with her, and yet when he was in her presence they all flew away. _I hardly know what she’d like to talk about._

 

Ah, that was it. _You know a deal of her -- but she hardly knows you._ “Perhaps we should start again,” Gilbert proposed. He took a step back, as though he were in a ballroom, and bowed -- not his courtly best, but the bow he had been using lately for greeting congressmen and generals and people of importance who would have laughed at the elaborate gestures of the French Court. “Hello. My name is Gilbert du Motier.”

 

Margaret gave a curtsey -- and none of your servile bobs, either, a dance-school curtsey that clearly said ‘I was taught better, once.’ (Gilbert recognized the form, from his own hours with the dancing master.) “My name is Margaret Frances.“

 

“ _E_ _nchantee_ , Miss Frances,” Gilbert said with a smile, taking her hand and, after an appropriate pause, kissing it lightly. “Do you live near here?” He looked around as if they were in a ballroom, and not a forest in Pennsylvania.

 

She smiled a little at that, clearly recognizing the gesture and the thought that went with it. “My family is originally from New York City. And you?”

 

Gilbert’s mind ran first to Versailles, with its glittering courts and fountains, but that wasn’t really _home._ Another house came to mind -- only perhaps two stories high, and made of common stone, with its two great towers and the gardens laid out in front of it, ivy climbing the walls - a far cry from the manicured brilliance of the royal palace. Perhaps he had been living at Versailles, but this -- this was where he was _from._ “My family has an estate at a place called Chavaniac. It’s in the Auvergne -- south of Paris,” he added, realizing she would have little idea where the Auvergne was in relation to anything else.  “We grow grapes there, for wine, and raise cows, for milk to make cheese.”

 

“So you are a farmer,” she paraphrased, smiling a little at her joke. Gilbert felt something tense inside him release. Yes, that was it exactly. In her world, he was an exceptionally prosperous farmer.  “After your visit, the other week, there was... great speculation from my mother about what it was your family did in France,” she explained.

 

Gilbert thought of Mrs. Frances exchanging glances with the other matrons in the ballroom behind a fan and could not help but smile. She _would_ speculate, wouldn’t she, in the great tradition of marriage-minded mamas everywhere. And on the strength of a single meeting, too. “Yes, we...grow grapes, and make cheese...and we serve.” _So the idea of Gilbert the servant is not a total lie._

 

Her face fell into confusion. “Serve?”

 

“The king, mostly,” Gilbert explained with a shrug. Her confusion cleared.  “My father was also in the army. He died when I was very small.”

 

“And your mother?”

 

Gilbert tried to call her image into being -- a petite woman, who in his memories always managed to look sad, burdened by circumstance and a difficult life. She was little more than a name to him - _Marie Louise Jolie de La Rivière._ He barely knew her. “My mother left me in the care of my grandmother after my father’s death. I didn’t really know her until I was twelve or so, and then she ...also died.” He remembered the funeral cortege, the black horses with their black plumes, the new black suit they had made for him and the repetition of the exercise, scarcely a month later, for his grandmother.

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

Gilbert shrugged. “We weren’t close -- families like mine often aren’t. I mourned my grandmother more -- and after her death it was decided I was a man grown, practically. I was sent back to school, to the College du Plessis, to train to be a captain of the Musketeers, and no more was spoken of her.”

 

“It sounds like a very lonely childhood,” she said, after a while.

 

“I don’t remember it so,” Gilbert said fondly. “There was a great forest near my house where I used to have the best adventures -- I would run off to help my father fight the Westphalians, or my many-times great grandfather marshall the troops of King Charles and Jean d’ Arc and expel the English from France.”

 

That, at least, brought a genuine smile to her face -- and to his, as well. It wasn’t hard to picture a younger, coltish version of himself running around with a stick for a sword fighting imaginary battles. “You come from a very long line of military men, then.”

 

“The Motiers are known in France for their martial valor.”

 

“Was that why you came here? To America? To fight in great battles?” She wondered aloud.

 

Good lord, she would think he was one of those officers who thought only of battle and the honor of the sword! “That was part of it -- but not all.” Oh, how to tell her about this without sounding deranged! He knew his thoughts sometimes ran away with him on this subject. “I wanted...when I was in Paris, I spoke to several Americans of importance, and was struck by what they said. About representation, about tyranny, about a man’s right to choose his own path.” _All things I never felt I had in my own life, in other words.  I knew what they meant, a little, speaking about ...absent fathers who made decisions without asking their sons._  “They were…on fire with it, this determination that I wanted so badly for myself, and I found...I could not stop speaking of it! I became a joke for several months at court, I was so consumed with this discussion!  Adrienne said it was silly of me, but --” He trailed off, caught in his own enthusiasm. _Adrienne._ Damn. He looked at Margaret and sighed, feeling wretched. “My... my wife,” he explained feebly.

 

She smiled apologetically, looking a little weak herself.  "I've heard Planchet mention her name." Her words were measured and carefully spoken, and she looked -- resigned? Pained? Oh, how hard she was to read sometimes!  If she had heard from Planchet (of course she had, Planchet would certainly have impressed upon her how much the Marquise would have scolded her for a job poorly done) that he was married, then for her to still have come here, to have written to him, spoke volumes about her courage -- and her affection. How much time must she have spent deliberating her actions, against the cold line of morality? “How...how did you meet her?” She managed to ask, keeping her eyes fixed on him. ( _How did you fall out of love_ , he imagined she wanted to ask.)

 

Well, she might as well have all of it. “Our marriage was arranged -- a tidy union of estates and fortunes. My guardians arranged it; we met...once before, or perhaps twice, and I apparently agreed to it by saying that she was nice, or something of that kind.  I suppose she was nice, but at twelve...who knows?”

 

“You married at twelve?” No amount of politeness could hide shock like hers.

 

“No,” he hastened to assure her, “at sixteen -- four years later. She was two years younger than I. And then we moved to her parent’s apartments near court.” He could see the doors of the Hotel de Noailles, the Duc and his wife standing at the steps as he alighted from the carriage and helped their daughter down. She had run to greet them, and that moment, when they had embraced her, and left him standing awkwardly near the carriage, he had felt like an unnecessary addition to her life. “We’re a poor match.” He stared distractedly at a branch half-hidden in the leaves nearby, fighting the urge to walk that way to kick it over.

 

“Why do you say that?” Gilbert did not see her face as she asked it, and he was not sure he wanted to. Would she be angry with him?

 

He smiled sadly. _Oh, let me count the ways._ “Adrienne was raised... in a different world. She grew up at court. For her, the highest honor in the world is ...to be noticed by her queen, the highest compliment to have one’s dress or one’s ...pretty turn of phrase copied or repeated. She lives for _La Danse de Versailles_ \-- the Great Dance of Court Life.” He shrugged. _I’ve never understood it, but there it is._

 

“And you?”

 

“I’m happier in the woods,” Gilbert admitted. “I don’t have the same courtly manners she does. I bow and dance well enough for America, but in France...I’m a bit of a joke at court. No, really,” he assured her, noticing her skepticism. “The first time --” Oh, lord, should he tell this story? He suppose he must -- it would give her the sense of it.  “The first time I was asked to dance at Versailles by the Queen, it was -- a great favor, you understand. Well, I stepped very badly and she -- she stopped the dance and laughed.” In the silence of the woods he could almost still hear it. God, that was a painful memory -- a whole room full of people, following the example of their Austrian-born, china doll of a queen, laughing.

 

But what was more painful by far was the memory of Adrienne, standing off to the side of the room with her parents, trying so valiantly to contain her rage at her husband and failing, a tiny pillar of anger in pale blue, her parents impassive behind her. “Besides my bad dancing, I’m too tall, to start, and my hair..”.He touched a hand to his head self-consciously, dragging off his cap and letting the light catch the copper tint in his hair. “My mother used to say it was a sign of my wild nature. _Le cheveux rouge est pour les Ecossais, pas le Francais._  Red hair is for the Scots, not the French.”

 

“So, was that why you left as well? To get away from...her?”

 

“A little,” Gilbert admitted. “But not...to get away. I have always been a disappointment to her. I thought...I thought perhaps it would be better if I... died.” The word sounded feeble on his lips. “Then she might be free to marry again.” He hadn’t ever said it aloud before, but, hearing it, for the first time, brought it home -- that _had_ been part of his reason to leave. He had left, as disobedience to his king dictated, at night under cover of darkness, sneaking away and hoping he would not be found out until his ship was far out to sea, and he had not even really said good-bye to Adrienne. Had she cared? Noticed, even? Or gone on with her life relieved that he was no longer there to burden her? She still had not written. He had no way to know for certain.

 

“A marriage to ...someone she liked better,” He added, wondering who among their friends she might have chosen if the choice was hers to make. “And she would have the benefit, then, of my fortune.” He smiled at the momentary flicker of interest in Margaret’s eyes. Yes, he’d left out the thing that would have delighted her mother most. “I have an income of some hundred and twenty thousand livres a year.” He tried to be dismissive. “Not bad for a country farmer.”

 

She didn’t have to know the buying power of the livre against the pound or the continental dollar to appreciate the sound of one hundred and twenty thousand -- though this information seemed to give her more dread than comfort, her eyes pleading silently _Please believe me when I say I didn’t know this when I met you_ , _I’m not one of those girls who chases men with money._

 

But something now was bothering him. “How long have you known?” He demanded suddenly. He didn’t need to specify about what -- it was the unfired pistol that had been hanging between them for the last five minutes.

 

Now it was Margaret’s turn to look ill at ease. “Mr. Planchet invokes Madame la Marquise very often,” she explained, the French strange (but not unpleasant) on her tongue.  

 

“Then why did you not…”

 

“Say anything?” Her voice was high. She swallowed nervously and tried to smile, managing only to look still more ashamed. “I thought about it. I... I wanted to see...if you would say anything about her on your own. I know some men would say nothing, or deny it, and that some...will say whatever they thought would win a woman over. I wanted to know if I should believe you, or if what you said was...just a story you told, to get me into your bed.” She said this last with a solemn, frightened face, afraid to meet his eyes. _She thinks I want that still,_ Gilbert realized. _And yet she’s here. Would she give that to me, if I asked? God grant me strength that I should not._

 

“And do you?” _I’ve said that she doesn’t love me, that she doesn’t make me happy, that our marriage is unequal. Aren’t those things men say?_

 

She considered the ground a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Servants hear more than people think,” she said, carefully. “We hear things, see things. I...I’m not a reckless person, and I think you know that, and I listened...I watched. And I think I know a little bit about you. And you are not the kind of man who lies  -- about such things, about anything. And when you do speak of it -- you speak of her...of what _you_ mean to _her_ , not her to you. You’ve tried, and it’s...your failure that  makes you unhappy. Not hers.  And I don't know if it's...wrong of me, to want to change that. But I do.” She swallowed again. “Let God judge me on that.”

 

“Do you know what I liked most about you when we first met?” He asked it suddenly, carried by the fear in her eyes to say something, anything, to calm her.  “Your sense of purpose. You wished for nothing more than to be useful, and I ...I admired that. I still admire it. At court it is idleness, and not industry, that is a virtue. I knew, watching you, that I had found my place -- and I wondered if anyone was ever of use to you.”

 

Silence. Her lips parted in confusion, trying to riddle out what he meant. A shout from the distant parade field drew her eye, the sudden skirl of fife-music. “We should go,” she said, as if she had heard nothing of what he had said. “They’ll be dismissing the parade soon.”

 

“Stay a moment more.” He hadn’t meant it as a command, merely a suggestion, but she stopped where she was standing, and turned back. “May I write you again?”

 

She paused, and nodded, once, almost to  herself, and then, quickly after, to him, a series of bobs in succession to assure him of her agreement. “Thank you,” he said, finally. “Good-bye, then.”

 

Margaret looked ready to leave, but something inside her had changed, shifted in the small space of the pause, considering something. “In France,” she asked, hesitating, “do you not part with a kiss?”

 

“We do.” Gilbert stepped closer, their faces almost touching, pressing his lips first to one cheek, and then the other, in the accepted fashion for a parting with a friend, wishing, as his face moved from one side of hers to the other, that he could stop in the middle and place a kiss where he most wished to, on her lips. He took half a step away, only to see that her eyes were closed, her lips just barely parted, as though waiting for something. Her eyes opened, and she seemed to remember herself, her lips closing quickly, ashamed to have hoped so high.

 

“That is how friends kiss, in parting,” he explained. _So if you ask someone else, they will not tell you I have taken advantage of you with a lie._

 

“And...people who have shared secrets?” She asked, still hesitating. “How do they kiss?”

 

He did not even try to hide his surprise (or his delight, if he was being honest) and tried to moderate himself, giving her the most chaste kiss he could manage before she had taken both of his hands in her own and pulled him closer, her own lips desperate on his own for the brief space of a few seconds before she had picked up her skirts and was practically running through the woods back to camp, as if she thought he would chase her, run her to earth.

  
_Or does she run away from herself?_ Gilbert wondered, his lips still warm with excitement, watching her go. _She says that she’s not reckless -- but I think she was once, if she can kiss like that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I CAVED AND LET THEM KISS TWO CHAPTERS EARLY I HOPE YOU'RE ALL HAPPY.
> 
> *ahem*
> 
> Look, another new chapter!
> 
> When I was writing this story for the first time, I made the mistake of skipping around a little, and when I got to this bit, I decided I didn't have the time or the inclination to write the awkward "Well, what are we and where are we?" scene. But now that this is a Real Story (TM) instead of just a series of posts on Tumblr, I thought you all deserved a little more exposition.
> 
> So now Gilbert gets to talk about his backstory! (Which is *fascinating! I just watched a PBS documentary this week called Lafayette: The Lost Hero, which is where some of this comes from, and would totally recommend to anyone interested in the period or the man!) Most of it is true, with the exception of the Adrienne business -- but he was actually an orphan, a heir with an extensive fortune, his several-greats grandfather rode with Joan of Arc, and he was actually laughed at by Marie Antoinette in the manner I mention here. I complained to several friends while writing this that this backstory was really sad, but I didn't exactly work at it -- Gilbert du Motier just had a really crummy childhood. Apart from the fact that he was worth a ton of money.
> 
> I'm not sure what the historical French stance was on red hair, but Gilbert was historically a red-head, and I know that France, Spain, and Italy in the 1600 and 1700s played host to a wide variety of Irish and Scottish emigres fleeing their native countries after political or religious changes. 
> 
> And Margaret gets to explain her motivation. A little. I think. That's the *one* thing that's been hanging me up with this story -- and several of you have alluded to it in your comments -- how does Margaret, who likes to follow the rules, end up going along with this affair that could ruin her reputation and her chances at a good marriage? Not easily, obviously. (And if it doesn't make sense to you, it's not supposed to make total sense to Margaret, either.) 
> 
> And in regards to Gilbert's speculation in that last line that Margaret was reckless, once -- even I don't know the answer to that one. I invite commentary from the audience.


	8. Parte Huit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gilbert finally receives a letter -- but not the one that he's been looking for. And this letter does not come with good news, either.

Gilbert looked around the tent and sighed. All these pens, busily scribbling out orders and copying letters, all these vast, intelligent minds hard at work at the business of war, all of them pulling as one towards their one goal -- victory, and independence.

 

All of them working while he sat idly by and wrote, once more, to every man of consequence asking what was to be done about his commission. How much help he could be if they would but solve this little issue for him, this tiniest of requests! He was prepared to serve as a volunteer without pay, prepared to take a rank that carried with it no command, if need be, if he could only but call himself part of this army and lend his shoulder to the task at hand.

 

When Alex had invited him here to work, he had done so to cheer Gilbert up, get him out of his tent and at least into the company of others -- and, to be fair to Hamilton, the ploy had worked up to that point. But sitting here, amidst all the hustle and bustle of Washington's ADCs, Gilbert felt more useless than ever.

 

In the bottom of his writing case Margaret's letters lay, tied with ribbon. A small pile -- she did not write overlong, paper being expensive -- but a significant one. It was becoming his habit to pull them out and read them over when he was feeling particularly hopeless, particularly alone.

 

But it seemed suddenly silly, to pull out his love letters to read them while everyone else was busy being studious.

 

“Vous êtes très loin.” 

 

Gilbert looked up from the blank sheet of paper in front of him and smiled, absentmindedly, at the man who’d spoken. John Laurens was one of the only other officers on Washington’s staff who spoke French -- and it was his habit to converse with Gilbert that tongue, even after the Marquis had finally progressed in his English.

 

“I’m not that far away,” Gilbert answered, in English, just to remind Laurens of his commitment to speaking now in English as much as he could, for the practice.  “Just in Philadelphia -- with the Congress.”

 

“Still about your commission?” Laurens asked sympathetically. A fatigued nod. “Have you written my father? I’m sure --”

 

“Several times,” Gilbert assured him, though he felt bad to say it. “He’s done all he can, I am sure. I don’t want to be a bother, and yet…” he looked around the tent. “I want only to be useful. This...waiting...” he trailed off, sure that Laurens knew what he meant.

 

The young man nodded. All of Washington’s aides and secretaries were nice enough to him, but Gilbert genuinely liked Laurens -- he was Hamilton’s friend, amiable and intelligent, but there was another sort of passion, similar to Hamilton’s but not quite as bright, a real desire for equality that seemed to shine through everything he did. They had spoken at some length one night, after dinner, about slavery, and what freedom meant in a land where the word did not apply equally to all men -- and women, too.

 

Ah, women.

 

Margaret’s letters seemed to have a heartbeat of their own in the writing desk under his hand, pulsing silently under the green felt of the writing surface, tempting him back to reading them. In her letters he felt needed, wanted -- at home. She wrote him news of her family, her sisters and her father -- little things, inconsequential things, about how Kitty had lost a tooth and Sarah had mastered a new stitch, as though he were far away instead of on the other side of the camp. But it was impossible for him to go and see them -- Gilbert the Servant was a dangerous game to play. Suppose her father should recognize him from his rides with General Washington, with Hamilton and Laurens? No, it was far better that he stay away. Safe, perhaps, but lonely. He hadn’t seen Margaret in what seemed a very long while, not since the day in the woods when she’d kissed him with such enthusiasm.

 

And God help him, but he could do with another one of those kisses now.

 

A grubby-coated private cleared his throat outside the half-open tent flap, and Laurens, already standing, went to answer what served as a door.

 

“Pardon, sirs, but is the Marquis de Lafayette about? I was told I might find him here.”

 

Gilbert sat up in his chair, listening -- a few of the other faces turned, unused to confused interruptions. Their work was focused, quick -- their messengers always knew whom they were looking for, and where they could be found. This was ...an occurrence of interest.

 

Laurens half-glanced over his shoulder, as if to confirm that Gilbert was, in fact, still here.  “He is. What's amiss?”

 

“Nothing amiss, sir, only -- there's a Frenchman here to speak with him.” He must have gestured over his shoulder at another man, unseen from the door. “Don't really know, his name, sir--don't really speak Frog--er, French, sir."

 

Gilbert rose from his chair, not even bothering to put his jacket back on. A Frenchman -- and so late from France that his English was awful. That alone could mean only one thing -- a fellow officer. He pushed past Laurens and stepped out into the sunshine, blinking a little bit as his eyes adjusted to the bright light and he made his observations of the man following the American soldier at a polite distance, his eyes lighting up as he recognized the face.

 

“Gimat!”

 

The man turned, his own smile broadening, and he quickly cleared the few steps between them to embrace Gilbert, thumping his comrade heavily on the back. "God, I think you've gotten taller," the older man said, stepping back a little to survey the Marquis with the air of a very pleased older brother. “What are they feeding you here?”

 

"Or you've gotten shorter," Gilbert said with a smile. “Why are you here?”

 

“Same reason as you, you oaf,” Gimat said with a platonic shove. “Glory and honor! Better than sitting at home. Look at you,” he said, looking over his friend again. “The uniform suits you -- or maybe it’s this fresh air.”

 

“It’s the sleeping outside,” the Marquis said with a smile. “Better than the stink of Versailles any day of the week.” He looked at his friend and could not help but embrace him again. Gimat, here! It seemed almost too good to be true -- a friend from college and the army, a man whom he had loved to have on his side in a battle or a barroom. He remembered his surroundings and turned back to the tent, where Laurens was waiting, politely, in the eaves of the tent, Hamilton roused from his work and slightly behind him. “My apologies -- where are my manners? Gimat, permettez-moi de vous présenter Colonel John Laurens, aide-de-camp du Général Washington, et Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Hamilton, Aide-de-camp à Monsieur le général aussi.”

 

“Je suis heureux de faire votre connaissance,” Gimat replied, giving a brief bow and shaking hands first with Laurens and then with Hamilton, surprised, perhaps, to find that Hamilton, while shorter, seemed to have a stronger grip. (But Gimat was always underestimating people -- had he not overlooked Gilbert the first time they’d met, and given up on him as a beanpole without a single good grace to recommend him -- until he watched him fence one day and realized what a great advantage there was in being tall?)

 

“Et moi aussi,” Laurens replied. “Est-ce que vous avez un voyage sans histoire?”  _ Was your trip uneventful? _

 

Gimat smiled, and shrugged. “Aussi bien que l'on attend, à cette époque de l'année.”  _ As well as one would expect, at this time of the year.  _ “Mais je ne suis pas un tres bon marin. Une autre raison pour laquelle je ne rejoins la marine!”  _ One more reason not to join the navy! _

 

Both men laughed, their mirth a little forced at Gimat’s terrible joke, and Gilbert, feeling the burden to release them back to their duties, slung his arm around his freind’s shoulder. “Let me get my coat and take you back to my quarters -- these gentlemen have urgent business to attend to,” he said, shuffling inside the tent for his uniform jacket and his writing desk, which he packed up quickly.

 

“Will there be food in your quarters?” Gimat asked expectantly as his friend joined him back outside the tent. “I haven’t eaten a decent meal in days.”

 

“I believe we can manage that, sir,” Gilbert said with a smile. “Have you a place to stay, for the evening? I'm sure Planchet -"

 

Gimat smiled. "Planchet! God, there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. You haven't gotten rid of him yet, then? I remember when he was the bane of your existence and you wanted nothing more than to be rid of him!"

 

“He's growing on me. And he's not quite as bad as he used to be,” Gilbert admitted.

 

“Does he still complain about everything under his breath and make work sound like a bore?" Gimat took Gilbert's silence as his answer and smiled. "Then he's still as bad."

 

The Marquis rolled his eyes and tried to punch Gimat in the arm. “Enough about my servants -- come, please -- the news from home! I get so few letters I believe everyone’s forgotten me."

 

They talked all the way back to his quarters, garnering quite a few confused looks as they went by in their foreign uniforms, speaking in their rapid French. Planchet was summoned, dinner planned, and a second chair found for Gimat, as well as place for him to put up his feet.

 

It was a pleasant way to pass a few hours on a hot day, sitting in the shade of his tent with the sides rolled up to admit the breeze and enjoying a bottle of passable wine that Gimat produced from his traveling trunk. So many names he had not heard in forever, so many stories about so many people he had almost forgotten. 

 

“Ah, I forget how long you’ve been away -- it feels like you know so little!” his friend exclaimed, pouring another glass of wine and drinking a good bit of it off with relish. “But I must say, you confuse me, Gilbert,” Gimat said with a careful smile, sitting back in his chair and studying his friend. “Six months away from home and you still haven’t asked me for the best part of my being here. “

 

Giilbert looked at him, confused. 

 

“You haven’t asked about Adrienne.”

 

Gilbert's world seemed to stop. After all these months, after all this waiting -- news, finally, from his wife. He realized, after a moment of stunned silence, that he was being rude, and smiled for his friend, trying to remember what it was like to be excited for such things. "Haven’t I?” he asked, disoriented.

 

Gimat gave a weak chuckle and went over to his trunk, producing his own writing desk and, from it, a letter, sealed in blue wax -- Gilbert recognized the color. “She gave that to me knowing I would see you,” he explained. 

 

“Did she say...she’s received my letters?” Gilbert asked, turning the paper over in his hands and considering the seal -- the A in elaborate script. 

 

Gimat shook his head. “We did not speak long -- she merely gave me the letter, asked me to deliver it.” 

 

No great shows of emotion, then, no plaintive appeals for him to make sure Gilbert was found -- no kisses for him to deliver?  _ Not that I would expect that from her -- she’s too well bred for such things. Emotion must be out of fashion at the moment. _ He nodded, almost to himself, and then, remembering his manners, glanced back up at Gimat. “My thanks, friend.” He swallowed and considered the letter again, hesitating. Did he want to break the seal? She’d been silent for so long.

 

He slid his finger underneath, the wax cracking in several pieces. The letter was a single page in Adrienne’s precise hand --  _ Dear Husband _ , not even his name. 

 

She had received his letters, but wished he would reconsider his course of action -- she had been very ill treated at court for a few months until it was realized she had not encouraged him. Nevertheless, the talk at court about him was not good, and she had suffered because of it. The Americans were quite out of fashion at the moment. Their daughter was well, and she hoped to be delivered of another child soon- her father quite hoped for a boy. She would look forward to when he was able to pay his respects to the King and Queen again and beg their forgiveness for his rash actions. 

 

And then her name - Adrienne de Noailles du Motier. Gilbert considered the signature, how foreign she made the ‘du Motier’ look against her own family’s name, as if it were some kind of bastard child she were being forced to accommodate.  He read it through again and felt his heart sink a little further. No change, then -- no sudden outpouring of affection. She did not write she missed him, spoke nothing about her hopes for his return -- did not even say she wished him home, only that she wished he could return to court and apologize. 

 

Coldness, rationality, politics, the things to be seen and not felt. 

 

“Not a happy letter, then,” Gimat asked, quietly, from what seemed like very far away. Gilbert looked up, his mind back in Pennsylvania, and not in Adrienne’s boudoir, where she had doubtless written this, at her ivory-colored escritoire, her brow creased in careful agitation, her writing even and precise.

 

Oh, she had not even had the decency to be properly angry with him! A crossed out line, a smudge, a stain -- anything! “She’s disappointed with me -- as she always is.” He folded the letter back and forth a few times, feeling the crispness of the paper. No, she could not have been more plain about how she felt if she’d been standing in front of him delivering a sermon.

 

“Adrienne is never disappointed with you, Gilbert!” his friend exclaimed. “You’re the happiest couple I know!”

 

“Then we’re very good liars,” Gilbert declared.  _ That, at least, is true -- for whatever else she fails at, she excels in smiling when she wants to frown. And she’s gotten better, in the years that we’ve been married.  _  “Tell me, Gimat, what do wives who love thier husbands write in their letters?”

 

The Frenchman grasped at thoughts for a few minutes, concern and confusion in his face. “I don’t...about how much they miss you, what they would do to you if you were home, how much they want you home…”

 

“Exactly. She writes none of those things.”

 

Gimat rolled his eyes and sat up in disbelief. “She must want you home, surely!”

 

“Not really,” he said with a frank shrug. “Only to apologize to their Majesties.” Gilbert handed the letter over to Gimat to read. His friend scanned the letter, his own eyes falling, and passed it back to Gilbert with a sympathetic expression. The Marquis shrugged again. “Like I said -- she doesn’t write she misses me. And I’m not surprised,” he added. “My wife  _ tolerates _ me. In the barest sense of the word. And always has.”

 

Gimat studied his own hands a minute, looking very torn. “Gilbert, there’s....there’s something else. About Adrienne.” He considered again, swallowed, re-positioned himself in his chair -- all the hallmarks of a man who is very anxious about what he is about to say. “Look, I didn’t want to say this -- I know -- I  _ thought  _ I knew -- how fond you are of her -- I was prepared to overlook it….but I think...that is, I have reason to...She’s been very quiet about it, but the thought is…”

 

He didn’t need to finish the sentence -- Gilbert knew. There was only one piece of news that would agitate his friend this much. “She has a lover.” Such a plain sentence. It wouldn’t surprise him. 

 

Gimat’s face paled. “ _ Exactement, _ ” he confirmed.

 

“Do we know him?” Gilbert asked, merely for something to say, steeling his shoulders and re-filling his wine glass, not because he felt he needed the drink but that it gave him something to do.

 

“Well, as I say, she’s been very quiet, but she’s been very close to... Capitaine Trenault.”

 

“Georges Trenault?” Yes, he knew the man. A captain in the household guard. Handsome enough, in a conventional way -- but then, he could hardly preach about conventional beauty. Not much in the way of a soldier, more the sort that only make the uniform look good. Not a commander by anyone’s imagination - at home in drawing rooms, not drawing plans, more clever with a turn of phrase than a sword or a company of soldiers. But he said the right things, did the right things -- the sort of man Adrienne had always wanted, someone to look the part. 

 

Excellent dancer, too. Gilbert took another swig of his wine, feeling very wretched indeed. 

 

“I shouldn’t have said anything, Gilbert, I’m sorry.”

 

“No, it’s...it’s fine. Thank you for telling me.”

 

Gimat considered, then went on, obviously trying to convince his friend that this was not a fiction he’d invented merely to make him angry or sad. “He’s often at her father’s house, in the discharge of his duties, and  you know she spends a lot of time there. They’re not being obvious about it - I doubt anyone at court has caught on, but anyone who knows her...I’ve been watching out for her, as your friend, and I...I didn’t know...I spent the whole voyage thinking about whether I would tell you.  _ He loves her _ , I thought,  _ he’s mad about her, he’ll think I’m trying to slander her. _ I’m sorry, Gilbert, I’m so sorry.”

 

“It’s not your fault,” Gilbert said. “She was … It was a matter of time. That’s why she hasn’t written. She’d just as soon have me gone.”

 

“Has it...has it always been like this?”

 

“More or less. She’s not loud about it, though -- she’d much prefer to sit and glare at me than tell me how to change to suit her. I’m sure she’s much more at home with me with an ocean between us. If she can’t see my mistakes they can’t pain her.”

 

“This requires more wine,” Gimat declared heavily.

 

“None for me, thanks,” Gilbert said quickly, covering his glass with his hand. Gimat looked quizzically at him. “I need a little bit of time with my thoughts,” the Marquis explained. 

 

“Alone?” his friend asking, setting the bottle down.

 

“It would be preferable,” he said with a shrug.  _ I need time to think. _

 

Gimat nodded, rising from his chair and collecting his coat. “I think I’ll take a walk,” he announced, draining his glass and shrugging his coat back on. “Although if I come back and find you’ve drained that bottle without me…”

 

Gilbert gave a weak laugh at Gimat’s threatening, accusatory finger, pointing at him in parody of exasperated schoolmasters everywhere, and rolled his eyes, knowing his friend meant well. He watched Gimat step outside and fix his hat on, and settled back into his chair, arms crossed.

 

_ Adrienne...and Georges Trenault.  _

 

_ My wife has taken a lover. _

 

Well, there it was. The thing he’d been dreading since that first day standing on the steps of her parent’s home -- the Rubicon of his marriage, the line that once crossed could not be retreated over. That she had taken it upon herself to declare, though such an action, that she had found him so much past redemption that she was prepared, not to try and shape him into the man she wanted, but to bodily step around him in pursuit of another who could do exactly as she wished him to do.

 

He knew this was often the state of the world, knew that in most marriages husband and wife merely muddled along for the sake of fortunes, estates, and heirs to same, but he’d wanted, so badly, for his marriage to be different! He’d stood for hours on tailor’s stools to make sure his coats hung just so and his cuffs had the appropriate amount of lace, dragged himself through hours of dance lessons in the wake of the royal ball hoping to make a grand showing to blot out his previous failure, rode and sweated for hours on end so he might look charming and imposing atop his horse when he rode by. But nothing had ever been good enough for her -- she wanted it all to be effortless. All the things he could change about himself would never quite balance out the things she wanted changed. And some of the things she wanted to change were things he loved about himself and never could quite give up.

 

_ I’ve been bettered by a captain in the household guards, _ he thought to himself.  _ Heir to extensive fortune, landed and propertied and titled, and my wife is happier with a mere captain. _

 

_ And the daughter of a duke has been beaten out of your heart by a mere  _ **_laundrymaid_ ** _ ,  _ another part of his head suggested viperishly.  _ Have you given any thought to  _ **_that_ ** _? _

 

Balance! Gilbert thought of the many pictures he’d seen of Justice, with her sword and scales, blindfolded and impartial, poised to pass judgement, and sighed. Was there a kind of justice in this? Did this make them even now -- was her infidelity somehow equal to his? Did Georges Trenault balance out Margaret? Because they had both sworn before God to be faithful, and they had both…

 

Gilbert wondered, suddenly, when the business with Trenault had started. Had she waited for any of his letters before deciding to treat him as dead? Did that matter -- or make his pursuit of Margaret any less awful than it was? For he had decided to break his vows before he knew of any infidelity on her part. Though it was not -- not so quick as some. Was it any better or worse that that they had not  _ known _ each other?

 

Gilbert’s head was suddenly filled with the thought of handsome Captain Trenault in his wife’s bed and shuddered. That had been an especially unhappy part of their marriage -- indeed, he was rather surprised they’d ever gotten around to two children, let alone one.  Adrienne had never been quick to welcome him there, and he’d never quite known if her aversion to the act was because of her own inexperience or her general distaste for him. Well, Gimat would hardly know if Trenault was spending the night. Perhaps their affair was of a different kind.

 

But there was that news- he had forgotten about that! The child! She was still expecting another child! 

 

He adored Henriette -- and that, too,  was another thing Adrienne deplored him doing, acting with favor towards his children. It was not done, not proper, to take an interest in one’s children. That was what servants were for, wasn’t it? To keep them in nurseries where they could not be heard or smelled unless they were called for and produced, clean and calm and tidy, to be held for a few minutes, parental rights asserted. But never by Gilbert. The first time he had asked, enraptured by the tiny little rosy face in her lacy robe, if he could hold his daughter, his wife had looked at him as though he’d asked to bash the baby’s brains out. Fathers did not hold children -- that was a maternal preserve. (He’d done it anyway, sneaking up to the nursery to sing to her on occasion, rock her in his arms and call her all the nonsensical names he could produce. His Henriette, his tiny little angel, his  _ petite choux _ , his  _ douce _ , his  _ bijou _ .)

 

Gilbert remembered the weight of that little head settling into his shoulder, the warmth of the little body against his own, and suddenly felt more alone than ever. His eye floated to the wine bottle, uncorked on his desk, and then refocused, just past it, on his writing case.

 

Four steps across the tent, the opening and closing of the writing case, delicate fingers at the knot of the ribbon, and then the oasis of Margaret’s letters was open to him. He opened the latest and could not help himself but smile at the shape of the familiar handwriting.

 

_ Dear Harlequin, _

 

_ How silly you must think my letters, when all I write to you about is my family! But I have nothing else to tell you of. Kitty asks daily for news of Gilbert, begs to be remembered to you when I see you. She is quite convinced we are to be married, despite the fact that she has only seen you twice.  But then, Kitty also thinks I should marry Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, because he has pretty hats and tells her jokes and lets her ride his horse, which she declares every time she sees him and which  amuses him greatly... _

 

He could not help but smile.

 

It had been a month since he had first written to Margaret, a month of hastily passed letters and hidden messages in laundry baskets and secret meetings after dark in strange, remote parts of camp. And how happy it all had made him! He had delayed for the sake of his guilt, but, now, knowing what he did, the pace of this courtship of theirs had taken on a different tone. Adrienne had been thrust at him, and that had ended how it had -- he wanted to let this woman learn him, slowly and easily, so that when she was won, he would know that it was a complete victory, and not a hollow, rotten sham. 

 

It was not a bodily lust, this urge of his-- at least he hoped not entirely -- for Margaret  _ listened  _  to him, counseled him, moderated and soothed, laughed at his jokes and amused him with her own. Margaret was a book he wanted so badly to read, and read again, and she would only allow him a single page at a sitting. A  consequence of her Yankee modesty, he thought, afraid to appear to bold, too quick to let him win her.

And he was happier now, to wait.  She would bring him stories of her sisters, her annoyance with her mother, the gossip of the laundrywomen, adding much needed color to an otherwise boring existence in camp. And he would relish spending the time with her, because when he was in her company, or reading her letters, he felt at peace. And that was precious to him.

 

Another thought occurred to him -- should he tell her what he knew? He could reason for or against it, but in the end...Margaret would decide how Margaret decided. It would seem too convenient, now, to bring it up when they had only been discussing it the other day.  "Yes, beloved, I've just learned my wife has been unfaithful from a friend of mine." She'd think he'd waited to trap her. No, better let it rest. Let her know about it when the time was right. But not now. He was in no hurry -- not with this waiting for his commission, at any rate. 

He buried himself in Margaret’s letters and slowly forgot about the other letter, with its fine, measured hand and blue sealing wax, his worry slowly fading with each line.

  
After all, he reasoned, was it so wrong, to wish to be loved?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I started this chapter with the intention of having Gilbert be friendly with more of Washington's staff, and then...we kind of got away from that. (Perhaps a little too conveniently away from that...) But I felt like I needed more stage business between this chapter and the next, so, here is a stage, and here is some business for it.
> 
> Although, maybe this isn't so convenient -- far from solving Gilbert's problem, I think this news has actually made his life a little more complicated. If he continues with Margaret, he loses the moral high ground to condemn Adrienne's behavior. (Not that he really had it to begin with.) And he's not going to tell Margaret that he knows this, thinking that she'll find it too convenient as well. And really, would Margaret take that as permission? Not really.
> 
> Anyway. I wrote all of this and then agonized over it for a while, so your thoughts are kindly appreciated.
> 
> GImat was a real person, although I've modified him heavily here - Jean-Joseph Sourbader de Gimat came over to the Colonies in 1776 as Lafayette's Aide de Camp; he later went on to have an extensive military career and became the governor of Saint Lucia.
> 
> Many other, finer pens than mine have spilled a lot of ink about John Laurens; there's a book called George Washington's Indispensible Men by Arthur S. Lefkowitz that provided a little bit of his background (as well as information about several of the other ADCs who were supposed to come in at some point and never did.) Laurens' father Henry Laurens was a member of the Continental Congress, and there are several letters from Lafayette to him that survive -- many of them are about receiving the long-awaited commission.
> 
> Gratuitous use of small adorable children in this chapter (Kitty and Henriette) because reasons. (Okay, but DAD GILBERT CAN WE JUST.)


	9. Parte Neuf

There was a letter waiting on his desk when Gilbert returned from his morning ride. He and Alex and John Laurens had gone on an early morning scout of the edge of camp, all three men restless at the lack of action. But something was coming -- he knew that much. It was in the way Laurens and Hamilton held their tongues and glanced at each other when Gilbert spoke longingly of battle. But of course they could not tell him of it, sealed to secrecy by the badges and honors of their office.  It was probably a good thing he had a meeting with Margaret planned for this morning as well, else he should have badgered them about it more.

 

His present challenge was of a slightly different kind - keeping Margaret a secret from everyone else. Including Gimat, who had (unluckily) been present when she’d dropped off the laundry one day and declared to Gilbert after seeing her that he had been assured French women were altogether superior to American ones, and that it was now most assuredly untrue. (Gilbert had fought very hard not to say anything, but had been saved, rather luckily, by another of Planchet’s tirades on the usurious practices of the laundrywomen and the thievish ways of women in general.) Gilbert now made sure Gimat had all sorts of notes to deliver when the laundry was due back.

 

But now there was a letter for him -- and with ...was that Washington’s seal? He might be late to his meeting if he stopped to read -- but...

 

Gilbert broke it and scanned as quickly as he dared.

 

Oh, happy news!

 

He shoved the letter into his pocket and walked, far quicker than he would usually, out of camp and into the woods, practically singing to himself as he made his way to the deeper part of the forest. The sun was shining, the air was filled with birdsong, and he had such news to share! He would be idle no longer! 

 

And, best of all, he had someone to share it with. No waiting for letters from home, no barely appreciative mumbles from Planchet, no disapproving looks from wives and monarchs he could not see. Someone who would care for what he had to say.

 

The words to the song he’d been humming came unbidden to his lips, practically unthought before they escaped as song, an old marching song that the officers liked to sing sometimes at night around a fire when the stars were bright _.  _

 

_ Dans jardin de mon père, les lauriers sont fleuris, _

_ Dans jardin de mon père, les lauriers sont fleuris, _

_ Tous les oiseaux du monde viennent y faire leur nid. _

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, _

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon dormir _

 

Margaret looked up from her sewing as he entered the part of the woods that was fast becoming their secret meeting place, more than a little surprised to hear him in such a boisterous mood, and singing. 

 

_ Que donneriez-vous, la belle, pour avoir votre mari ? _

_ Que donneriez-vous, la belle, pour avoir votre mari ? _

_ Je donnerais Versailles, Paris et St. Denis. _

 

He practically picked her up from the rock on which she was sitting, sending her sewing flying as he whirled her around in ecstatic delight, picking up the last refrain of the song as he went.

 

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, _

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon dormir! _

 

“What is it?” she asked, caught between her surprise and trying not to laugh with him. She’d never asked why he’d become more demonstrative in his affection after his friend Gimat had arrived from France, and he hadn’t told her.  Perhaps she’d guessed -- Margaret was good like that. It seemed, wrong to him, somehow, to try and reason it out with her, tell her it was all right now, what they were doing, because Adrienne was doing it, too, far away in France. So he let it lie. And of course he would not tell her today -- not when he had such news!

 

“I am to be allowed out of camp again! I am to be given a command!” 

 

Her face fell, and she stopped spinning with him, stepping away and trying to find her feet. “A command? 

 

“Well, it is not really a command, it is only orders to ride with General Conway, but it is still something! All my hopes were formed upon it, and now it has happened! Is it not _ sensationnel _ ?” He smiled and raised his face up to the sky, spinning around in place like a little child.

 

“No, Gilbert, it is not.” He stopped his own exuberant dance of joy and looked at her, his world still spinning. “A command means there is to be a battle. A battle means danger.”

 

“But the thrill, Margaret, the _ frisson _ , the, the  _ exitation _ , the  _ sonore de bataille _ !”

 

“Have you ever been in a battle, Gilbert?” she asked pointedly.

 

That brought him back down quickly. “Well, no, excepting the skirmish, I have not. But this is a chance to --”

 

“I have,” she said plainly. “At Trenton I helped load and fire my father’s gun. Because one of the crew took a musketball to the lung. I had to drag his corpse away before I could assist them. A man I had known for near a year --a man I had listened to speaking of his children, of his hopes for his family. I had to watch him struggle to breathe as he choked on his own blood, with no comfort to ease his passing. And tell his widow about it afterwards.” Her face was pale with the remembered horror of the day, her voice in low and deadly earnest. “You speak well of battles because you’ve never had to watch one.” She studied him sadly and shook her head again. “No, Gilbert. I will not be happy for you. I can’t.”

 

“You...you’re nervous, that’s all. Afraid.”

 

“Yes, I am,” she admitted, her voice thick with emotion. “Men think only of glory -- but it is the women who have to clean up afterwards. You’ll change your mind when you’ve had to bury someone you love.”

 

“And be thought a... coward? A  _ froussard _ ? ” he asked bitterly, practically spitting the words at her.  _ I didn’t cross an ocean to sit back in camp among the women! _

 

“Better a live coward than a dead hero,” she countered back.

 

Gilbert looked at her with anger. “I came to share my joy, and you give me back sorrow. A poor return, I think.”  _ You sound like a scold, _ he wanted to say.  _ You sound like my wife. _

 

“I can give you nothing else, sir,” she said, shaking her head, lapsing back into the stilted formality of earlier days, when she would not use his name. “Except to wish you luck with General Conway. Good Luck. And God speed you.”

 

And, so finished, she turned, gathered her sewing from where it had fallen, and walked quickly back to camp without a second look backwards, leaving Gilbert feeling radiant with anger. How dare she? Assuming that he would die, that he would skulk at the back of the battle like a coward when there was honor and glory to be won at the side of one’s peers! What would she know of live cowards and dead heroes? 

 

_ More than you, Gilbert,  _ some other part of him reminded quietly.  _ She is a nurse. She knows that much of battles, that you must give her.  _ And, another thought, coming slowly after the first.  _ She would not speak so if she did not care.  _

 

_ She sounds like your wife.  _ The thought repeated itself, gentle this time. Adrienne wouldn’t miss him, as a wife  _ should _ , but Margaret... _ She would miss you, if you were gone.  _

 

_ And men die in battles all the time. _

 

The clearing was suddenly cold, and he thought he heard another voice singing another verse of his song, an earlier verse and a sadder one.

 

_ Et la blanche colombe qui chante jour et nuit, _

_ Et la blanche colombe qui chante jour et nuit, _

_ Qui chante pour les filles qui n'ont pas de mari? _

 

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, _

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon dormir. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who sings for the girls who do not have their husbands?
> 
> An interesting question.
> 
> The song Gilbert is singing is Auprès de ma blonde, a French marching song from the 17th century also sometimes called The Prisoner of Holland. It starts out jaunty and full of pep and takes a kind of dark turn in the middle; the song’s narrator has lost her husband as a prisoner of war and is singing about what she’d give to bring him back. (You can listen to an excellent version by Olivia Chaney here on YouTube.) 
> 
> Since the most recent season has not turned out any of everyone’s favorite fighting Frenchman (YET), I think we deserve a new chapter of La Fille. I just wish it could be a happier one, or longer. Alas. Sometimes we need filler.
> 
> I feel it’s incumbent upon me to apologize for the rampant abuse of the historical timeline in this story -- I rewatched season two and realized that I think the scene with Lafayette probably takes place *after* the Battle of Brandywine, not before -- which throws this whole story into a crazy mess.
> 
> Not that we’re playing by the historical rules anyway, but still.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for the kind comments last chapter -- I appreciate that. To all the new readers -- welcome! So glad you’re here!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Brandywine, Gilbert plans his recovery.

Was it not strange, the way the mind turned around the slightest point of clarity? 

 

It was all noise and smoke and a storm of voices, shouting around him and at him, insensible for their general clamor. And all he could think of was that song, that damnable song.

 

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, _

_ Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon dormir. _

 

_ His leg, man! The surgeon, immediately! General! General! Gilbert! _

 

_...Gilbert?  _   
  
And he was falling, and the light was fading, and the clamor only got louder as he fell.

 

_ Men die in battles all the time. _

 

When he awoke, the smoke was gone, and the smell of blood too, and silence reigned. He was not outside any longer, but inside, under canvas, in a tent. He tried to sit up and found his leg in agonizing pain.  _ There was a battle. I was observing the brigade with the General _ ,  _  and the troops were falling back, and I rode up to cheer them,  _  he remembered.  _  The line stayed a while, and then fell back again. There was an officer -- but no, I wounded him. He did not touch me. Then how… _

 

“Welcome to the land of the living,” the wry voice of Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton said brightly from across the tent. Gilbert looked up to see his friend installed in one of his chairs, helping himself to one of Gilbert’s books and, it looked like, a glass of his wine. “You’ve given everyone quite a fright, you know. I thought Washington was about to have Conway court-martialled for letting you get away from him.”

 

“What happened?” Gilbert asked, contenting himself with lying down and craning his neck to observe his friend. Hamilton, seeing the difficulty, moved his chair and poured a second glass of wine.

 

“Well, we lost,” the young ADC said baldly. “Before that? There are half a dozen men claiming you charged in to ‘assume the port of Mars’ and rally the troops like Henry at Agincourt - in the best way, of course - and actually held the line for quite a bit, which is nothing short of miraculous, in my opinion…”

 

“We were overwhelmed,” Gilbert added, knowing Hamilton would go on for hours about a single maneuver, if given the chance. The young man nodded.

 

“But it was very orderly, the retreat! You were in perfect command. They seemed -- they seemed to trust that you knew your business. There was no throwing of equipment, or anything of the kind. It was all in order.”

 

“And my leg?”

 

His friend looked, for once, a little uneasy. “Ah, well, now we come to it. Yes, your leg. Well, I understand there was a bit of a tete-a-tete with one of the British officers in the first retreat, but the wound in your leg was a musket ball. Impossible to say where from, of course, could have been anywhere. No one even noticed you’d been shot until you fell off your horse. Loss of blood, I think they said.”

 

“The...retreat?” Lafayette realized for the first time how highly improbable it was that he should be under a tent again. “Where are we?”

 

“Oh, didn’t I say? Philadelphia! Or ...near enough,” Hamilton amended slightly. “But we are perfectly safe here, and you have nothing else to worry about in the matter of your leg.” He smiled at his friend’s obvious confusion. “Oh, yes, already been dealt with. I think they saved the bullet, if you’d like to keep it.  And I must say,” he added, his smile roguish, “You have excellent taste in surgeons.”

 

As the Frenchman wondered what on earth his friend meant by that, there was a pointed cough at the tent-opening. “May I come in?”

 

Gilbert looked at the tent flap, watching it turn back to admit a female figure, with dark hair and a determined brow. What little strength he felt truly possessed of left him, and he was suddenly glad of Hamilton’s presence. But why was she  _ here? _

 

“Oh, Miss Frances,” The Lieutenant Colonel said with a smile. “I hope you do not mind my being here. Your patient has awoken!”

  
  


“I can see that,” she observed softly. “I hope you are not over-exciting him. That wound shouldn’t be moved at all for the next several days while it settles.” Did Hamilton mean to say that she had -- that she had --  _ Mere de Dieu. _

 

But now she was all business, all professionalism and cool and calm. And when he had been so rude to her, so full of, of  _ vanité _ and  _ colère _ . And he might have died, having been so cruel!

 

“Not in the least,” Hamilton said pleasantly, though the look on Margaret’s face seemed to doubt the truth of that very much. “Shall I leave?” He asked, rising a little from his chair.

 

“No,” she said, a little too quickly, and then, recovering, added. “It’s fine. I only wanted to check his dressing. I … didn’t think he would be awake.” She came a little further into the tent with her basket of supplies and set it down next to Gilbert’s cot, moving back his blankets with buisness-like speed, uninhibited by the prospect of the general bloody mess she was likely to find there. 

 

But there was no mess -- someone had taken the liberty of removing his breeches and cleaning around the wound. Instead, there was only a heavy pad of linen, liberally banded into place around one naked thigh. She inspected the wound, smelled it, and, with a gentle but firm touch, probed the flesh of his thigh. around the dressing. “Can you feel that?” He nodded, completely at a loss. Adrienne was practically terrified to see him naked, averting her eyes when he left their bed, and here was Margaret -- his Margaret, who was too modest to let him see her hair down! -- in this most intimate of spaces, unmoved and unafraid. Pleased with the wound itself, she tucked him back under the covers and felt his forehead for fever with the back of her hand. Her hand was blessedly cool, and he wished for a moment that his brow  _ was  _ fevered so she might have stroked it more. “Has he drunk anything?” she asked Hamilton. The officer shook his head. “He should drink something, if he can keep it down. No solid food yet.” 

 

“I will see to it,” Hamilton declared staunchly. Margaret looked at him out of the corner of her eye, confused by his exuberance, but said nothing, gathered her supplies, and left as quickly as she’d come.  _ She did not meet my eye,  _ Gilbert realized.  _ She looked at Alex -- but she was afraid to look at me. _

 

“Did you send her?” He asked faintly, watching the empty space where she’d been.

 

“Me? Sorry -- no. I have it on the best authority it was your man Planchet who went for her.”

 

“Planchet!” Had he heard that right? Planchet? His Planchet? His ill-tempered, constantly complaining valet? 

 

“Indeed. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t know the man I heard it from is practically the sitting model for Honesty.” Lieutenant Harris -- commands her father’s company.” The Lieutenant Colonel paused, and, seeing that his friend was sitting very quietly and with expectant eyes, realized that, for once in his life, he was actually  _ being asked _ for the story. An unexpected delight. “So they’ve brought you back, and you’re delirious and bloody and everything is in an uproar, and Planchet takes one look at you and practically turns tail out of the tent -- I thought he was going to be sick, poor man, he was practically green. But that wasn’t it at all. Lieutenant Harris happened to be with Doctor Desmond to see if Captain Upshawe’s surgery had gone well, and he says Planchet comes into the surgery, looking everywhere until he sees Miss Frances. He walks up and greets her with a little bow, and says  “My master the Marquis is now gravely ill and in need of care and I will have only the best for him. He has always spoken highly of you as a woman of moderation and skill, and I know he would value your help, could he ask for it now himself. I will double whatever pay you draw from the army if you will come at once.” Double the army pay - Can you imagine!”

 

“I can’t,” Gilbert said weakly, thinking of what it must have cost Planchet in pride to stray from his usual parsimonious ways to offer such a princely sum for the hire of a nurse. “What ...did she say?”

 

“Nothing! Apparently she just... stood there for a minute, which you and I can both agree is very odd, since Miss Frances is never surprised by anyone or anything. But then she recovered, in good order, and said that they would not speak of fees, and that she would come when she had finished there. Which she did -- in fact, she was a deal quicker than the surgeon. By the time he’d arrived, she’d already taken it upon herself to clean you up and extract the ball. And done a fine job of it, too, it seems.”

 

Gilbert rested his hand lightly on the dressing on the side of his leg, thanking whatever God in heaven had decreed he be insensibly delirious when Margaret had bodily stripped him down and taken a musket ball out of his thigh. Doubtless she had done the same thing for many others, but that she should have seen him  _ sans vêtements _ …

 

_ Enough!  _ It was enough that he was recovering from a wound without complicating it further. He was aware that sometimes men who had been wounded...lower down... sometimes...responded to a doctor’s touch as one might a lover. He prayed he had not done so, for his own dignity as well as Margaret’s. 

 

It was probably for the best that he had been unconscious while all of this was taking place -- he was not sure he could have stood it otherwise, for so many reasons. Would Margaret have borne it well? Of course she would have -- she was splendid in all circumstances.  _ But a heavy wound...to someone she admired...to someone she loved...when she had warned him... _

 

_ It is lucky she  _ **_can_ ** _ keep a calm head, or you might not be here to speculate about it! _

 

But he did not have time to speculate further, as the tent seemed to swell with even more visitors -- Laurens, Tilghman, and a whole host of others, all intent on checking his progress and congratulating him on his splendid success, and his energy was directed back into playing the wounded host rather than the confused and musing lover.

 

It was nearly nightfall before Lafayette had his thoughts to himself again. Planchet, noticing his master’s growing fatigue, finally ushered the last of the well-wishers out and busied himself with preparations for dinner. (Lafayette’s stomach had growled quite audibly in the last hour, and finally it could no longer be ignored.)

 

“May I come in?”

 

Both master and servant turned to the tent entrance, and Planchet stepped up to the tent flap to admit Margaret, once more armed with her basket.

 

“Miss Frances.” Planchet sounded almost pleased. “We were considering dinner. Do you think it wise?”

 

Margaret, unaccustomed to being consulted on matters of diet, and especially unused to being consulted by Planchet, with whom she had previously quarrelled at seemingly every meeting, looked shocked for a moment before recovering herself in good order. “A little broth -- nothing heavy. Some wine, too -- red, if you have it. To fortify the blood.”

 

“ _ Parfait, _ ” Planchet said with a little bow, first to Margaret and then to his master, exiting the tent with remarkable quickness and leaving the two of them -- mercifully, for the moment, alone. Margaret looked at the empty space vacated by Planchet, and then, meeting Lafayette’s gaze, could not help but laugh. (It was not a hearty sound, though, nor well-felt -- it was a...a frightened noise, made to cover some nervousness on her part.) 

 

“I thought he hated me!” she admitted, her voice quiet.

 

“Planchet is a man of hidden depths,” Gilbert said, watching her closely, trying to see what would be best for him to say.

 

“He loves you a...a great deal.” Her fingers were playing nervously with the edge of her jacket, her eyes unwilling to meet his.

 

“I think ...he is not the only one,” Gilbert stated gently, reaching out to take her hand. Her fingers were cold, and her restless fingers were suddenly still, like a bird caught in a thicket, afraid to be found out. “Margaret, please…”

 

“I was so short with you!” she said, finally meeting his eyes, her voice coming out in agitated sobs, her eyes jewel-bright with tears, the tears she had, no doubt, been holding in for hours.  _ Oh, mon douce Columbine! _  The hand that was not clasped in his own was covering her mouth, as if she could hide her distress with a single set of five fingers. “So angry! If you had -- I would not have forgiven myself! And when he said that you were...that you were…”

 

“But you came,” Gilbert reminded her, squeezing her hand.

 

“And a great help I was, my hands were barely steady. And you were in such pain…”

 

Gilbert had had enough of this -- he struggled to sit up a little straighter and pulled her arm towards him, jerking her from her chair and towards his head in haphazard fashion. Their heads clicked, audibly, and his vision swam, but then his lips were on hers, and he could feel the racking sobs begin to calm, her body settling into a kind of half-sitting position on his bed, perched on her hip as their kisses got deeper and a little more desperate.

It was the first time she had kissed him, properly, saving a few stolen pecks on cheeks and one very chaste moment on the lips, given in parting at one meeting or another. Gilbert settled  back against his pillows a little, taking her with him. (Her weight along his chest was wonderfully calming, he wished he could sleep all night with her perched there, and he thanked God and all the angels that she was on his good side.) In fact, he mused, drinking in her attentions, he was a little disappointed he had not availed himself of this particular show of affection before, for Margaret was quite good at it. The boning of her stays pressed against his ribs, and he could feel, tucked modestly behind a scarf, what promised to be a pair of truly wonderful breasts.

 

Suddenly, she stopped, pulling her lips away from his own, listening intently, and then the tent-flap opened and a voice called, from outside “May I come in and see the patient?”

 

And magically his nurse was gone.

 

Gilbert was in constant awe of how  _ le General  _  filled up a room. Were he in the great halls of Versailles itself, still he would dwarf ordinary men. Was it his carriage, his manner of bearing? His uniform, perhaps, the blue sash of command, his boots, his hat, even? Or was it simply that when General George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Armies, moved and spoke, it was with such quiet, assured authority that men stopped to listen.

 

“And how is our favorite fighting Frenchman today?” the General said, smiling with uncharacteristic levity. 

 

“Very well,  _ mon General _ ,” Lafayette said, sitting up a little straighter in bed and hoping that certain parts of his anatomy were not betraying his recent activities with Margaret, busy in the corner with some unseen task.

 

“You look flushed -- have you taken a fever?”

 

Gilbert silently cursed his unusually fair complexion and shook his head. “No fever, General, no -- merely a ...a  _ frisson _ of embarassment to be so... _ deshabille _ .”

 

Washington seemed to think this appropriate, and nodded, understanding completely. “The camp is alive with little else but news of your wound,” he said, smiling with a father’s proud tenderness. “Any man who did not speak well of our alliance speaks well of it now. You should feel very proud of that. You are feeling well? They told me that your wound had already been attended to, but I have brought…”He motioned with a hand, and another gentleman, wearing a physician’s periwig and carrying a surgeon’s chest, stepped into the tent, “my personal physician, Dr. James Craik, to attend you. One never knows, with army surgeons.”

 

“ _ Mon General _ is too kind,” Gilbert said, drawing back the covers so that the surgeon could inspect his wound. 

 

Doctor Craik, settling into a camp stool, set aside his chest and peered cautiously at the Marquis’ leg, probing it with gentle fingers as Margaret had done that morning. “This has been very expertly done,” the physician announced in his soft Scottish burr, after a cursory examination of the wound. “And the ball was removed entirely?”

 

“Indeed, sir,” Gilbert assured him. 

 

“I must congratulate you, Marquis, on your good fortune at finding a man to get it out with such skill,” the physician said, sitting back and closing his chest of tools. “It is never an easy task -- and this one very neatly done indeed. Though I sense,” he added, with a gleam in his eye, “the touch of a woman about it, too, for no man knots his dressings that neatly.”

 

_ Discovered at last. _ “My valet has been kind enough to secure the services of a nurse -- Miss Frances.”

 

Upon hearing her name, Margaret finally turned, the nearly invisible servant rendered visible, ducking her head in perfect courtesy. The flush was gone from her face, and she looked every picture of the unassuming, industrious little chambermaid.

 

The Commander in Chief smiled beneficently. “We must thank you for your expert attentions, Miss Frances, on behalf of one of our greatest allies,” the General said kindly in her direction. “Your services are most appreciated, and will be rewarded in due course.”

 

Margaret nodded, unsure of what else she might say.

 

“Has any thought been given to where he is to be moved, sir?” Sir James asked, peering up at the Commander in Chief from his chair. “I can say from experience he should not ride with such a wound, if he means to keep it healing.”

 

“The Army, as you know, is in retreat,” Washington amended, for Gilbert’s benefit, should he not already have received the news from the others. “Philadelphia we may hold a little while, but it is not the ...ideal atmosphere for convalescence. You would naturally be an object of some interest there, and taking rest might prove difficult in such surroundings. The Moravians have a settlement in Bethlehem that I think will do very nicely -- they are a kind folk, and they know their business. I have sent a letter, which I hope very soon to see an answer to, asking for a family to take you in. Your nurse shall go, too, obviously, and your valet.”

 

Gilbert nodded, unsure of what else there was to say. He was being dispatched away from the army -- that was not quite to his liking, but there seemed little he could do, as he could not mount a horse, let alone stay on it long enough to lead a charge. 

 

That he was being sent away  _ with Margaret...   _ Well _.  _ Now  _ that _ was a consolation indeed. 

 

“How long do you think I shall be away?” he asked Dr. Craik.

 

“Oh, two months, at the very least,” The doctor hazarded. “It takes a great deal of time, for the flesh to knit, and there will be all the time after spent learning to walk again. Yes, I can say no shorter than two months. Unless you wish to do as General Arnold has done, and take...other measures.” The look on the doctor’s face as he said this gave Gilbert the very strong impression that Arnold’s ‘other measures’ were not quite approved by the medical profession at large.

 

_ Two whole months!  _ It sounded almost too good to be true. Two whole months alone with Margaret, in a place where she was not know and he an outsider! Two months -- and after such kisses!

 

“It will be time well spent,” Washington assured him fondly, mistaking the surprise in Gilbert’s eyes for desperation that he would be away so long. “You shall rejoin us in no time at all.” He smiled at Gilbert again with a father’s fondness, and glanced, again, at Margaret’s corner. “You must take every care with him, Miss Frances. Treat him as you would...a son of mine.”

 

Margaret looked frightened by such a charge, but she did her best to bob her curtsey and look sufficiently up to such a lofty assignment.

 

“Have you written to Adrienne?” Washington asked suddenly.

 

Gilbert’s sudden euphoria vanished, replaced with cold reality. This was still 1777. He was still injured -- and still married to a woman who would rather the bullet had hit a little higher.   _ Oh, Adrienne.  _ “No,” he said truthfully, mindful, as he always was now when the name was mentioned, of Margaret, hidden out of his view. It did not take much to imagine her face, or the emotions she would doubtless be hiding behind it. Careful, law-abiding Margaret, who only came to meet with him because she chose to forget that he had a wife at home in France.

 

“You should write to her -- tell her not to be worried. Wives are always good for worrying. She will doubtless hear reports of your death from others,” Washington remind him, warm and helpful. Gilbert nodded, not trusting himself to speak and the General smiled, feeling his counsel had fallen upon receptive ears. Good wishes dispensed and his friend’s good health assured, Washington took his leave, clasping Gilbert’s hand in friendship before he left.

 

When he was gone and out of earshot, the Marquis turned desperately to his nurse, trying to salvage the night’s events. He’d hoped for more kisses, but her unsettled face told him that was probably not going to be possible. “Margaret…”

 

“You should heed the General’s advice. Your wife will want news,” she said, her voice just a little bitter, striding over to the side of the tent and producing his writing desk from among the boxes. She deposited it at his side and then ducked out.

 

“Margaret, please!”

 

But there was nothing to be done. She was gone.

 

It was Planchet who dressed him for bed that evening, detailing the packing he had still to do and chattering, in a way that he probably thought was soothing, of the many small adventures he had had that day. It was a strange change -- his valet was usually silent and grave. But Gilbert realized this was the servant’s way of trying to cheer him, to bring the outside world inside. And he listened, in a half-hearted way, his mind wishing that his other nurse were still here, giving him  _ her  _ news.

 

Most of his luggage had already been dealt with before he had ridden off to Brandywine. It was only his essentials that remained out and about, Planchet doing an excellent job of living out of trunks. The cart that would take him there had been arranged, the date decided. 

 

But there was one other matter to be dealt with before the move to Bethlehem could be completed, one final matter of desperate importance, and one that Gilbert was, to be quite frank, not looking forward to completing in the slightest.

 

"I 'ave found the gentleman Monsieur wished to see," Planchet announced with pleasure the next day, drawing the tentflap back and admitting a man of slight stature in a blue regimental coat. 

 

The last time Gilbert had seen Sergeant William Frances of Hamilton's New York Artillery it had been dark, and the gentleman had been three cups into a cask of very fine ale, giving the Marquis little time to reflect upon his aspect. Seeing him now in his regimental jacket, facings pressed and buttons immaculate (no doubt the work of his daughter), Gilbert had no problem at all placing him in his rightful place as the superintendent of a roomful of York City counting room clerks. A man of quiet authority and careful consideration, perhaps half a head taller than his daughter and wearing a neat mustache in an abbreviated German style and a pair of spectacles, he and Margaret looked very much alike, standing there together  -- save that while Frances  _ pere _ looked a little overwhelmed at the prospect of being in the presence of French Nobility, Frances  _ fille  _ did not look pleased at all. Or, if she was not pleased, she was...conflicted? Gilbert did not think he had a word for the emotion on Margaret’s face, but he was certain it was not a pleasant one.

 

"Sir," Frances said, removing his hat and bobbing an odd, half-formed bow with the slightest suggestion of pointing his leg, in the accepted fashion. There were, he could see, a few drops of sweat standing out on his brow, and his fingers kept grasping anxiously at the brim of his hat. This was not a man who was at ease. Gilbert nodded his own greeting and smiled, trying to make this meeting as painless as possible. (Was it strange that he wanted the good Sergeant to like him?)

 

"Sergeant Frances, thank you so much for coming. I hope you understand my reasons for wishing to see you."

 

"You...you wish to take my Margaret on as a...a private nurse," Sergeant Frances said, glancing for confirmation at Planchet, who nodded helpfully across the tent.

 

"That is it exactly," Gilbert acknowledged kindly. "My physician informs me I shall have need of her for some two or three months." The uncertainly offered by so long a time weighed heavily in Mr. Frances' eyes, and Gilbert went on. "I know how greatly your family must depend upon your daughter's income, Sergeant, and I am prepared to offer very generous terms to...compensate for her absence. Ten continental dollars a month. And an...advance of five dollars now, in hard currency for traveling expenses, and service so far."

 

As he had discussed the matter with Planchet, his valet had been adamant that the terms were indeed too generous -- an army nurse received but two Continental dollars a month. But with rates for washing being what they were (two shillings a shirt! the effrontery!) it would have been unwise, in Gilbert's untutored opinion, to offer less. As a sergeant, he was told Mr. Frances received eight dollars -- or would receive, when the paychest was in sufficient funds to disburse pay. And five dollars now, in silver specie! It was a fortune.

 

And Mr. Frances' frankly surprised look was making him regret his generosity. Was he perhaps being too generous? Would his fatherly sensibilities be offended, thinking that Gilbert was intent on paying for something else along with his daughter's nursing skills? 

 

But there was something else, in William Frances' eyes, a kind of balance sheet on which Gilbert could almost see the numbers being tallied, the profits of her laundry and her nursing versus the sum offered by the Marquis, the knowledge of the army's retreat (she would be safe and out of the line of fire in Bethlehem, no water to carry for cannons there) and the thought of her installed in a house (she would have plenty to eat, and a real roof over her head.) 

 

And there was winter to consider, too. With the Army soon to go into winter quarters Gilbert was certain Bill Frances was also considering the unique problems posed by an army in winter camp, and the sleepless nights common to a man who has four daughters, and two of those of an age to worry over. Putting Margaret in a house in Bethlehem would leave her warm and cared for and (perhaps the most important consideration) out of the line of sight of other officers looking for a friendly face and a warm bed as cold weather set in. 

 

_ Isn't that what you're doing?  _ Something said waspishly in the back of his brain. Gilbert batted the thought away and waited.

 

"Margaret?" Mr. Frances asked, turning to his daughter. "Do you have any... opinion in the matter?"

 

"It is...a lot of money, Papa," Margaret acknowledged carefully, watching her father's face to see what his reaction would be, a gesture that struck Gilbert with its tenderness. She wanted to do what made him happy.  _ Does she never think of herself _ , Gilbert wondered privately, trying not to smile at this small familial scene playing out in front of him.

 

“Might we...have a moment outside, alone?” Mr. Frances said suddenly, bowing again as if this were a particularly arduous favor he was asking of the Marquis. Gilbert nodded, and the two of them ducked outside while the Frenchman sat up a little straighter in bed and strained to hear.

 

“But is it what you want, Margaret? Two months is a long time to be away from your mother. And with only the...disagreeable Frenchman for company. I’ve never heard you say a nice word about the man! To say nothing of his master.”

 

“Planchet is not so disagreeable now, Papa. He has been much better ...lately. And I am sure there will be other people, at the market, and in town. I am only cooking and cleaning and tending his master’s wound -- for ten dollars a month, papa! And his master is...his master is confined to bed.”  _ His master is no threat to me,  _ she might as well have said. Well, it was true, wasn’t it? A musket-ball through the thigh made any  _ liasons scandaleuses _ highly unlikely. (Though he did remember older, grizzled officers confined to bed telling all manner of tales about the ways in which a whore might please a man who could not necessarily...But those men were forever telling stories anyway.)

 

Gilbert returned his attention outside. “Your mother won’t like to lose you.”

 

“Arabella and Sarah can give all the help she needs -- and Kitty is old enough to handle the laundry, too. She will manage, Papa. ...And so will you.”

 

Her father gave a dry chuckle. “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”

 

“Not any more, Papa. I will have a house, a kitchen -- and my own room, with a fire in it. Planchet has promised!”

 

“And does Planchet hold his master’s purse strings?” Bill Frances sounded unconvinced. So would Gilbert, too, if he’d had to listen to several months of comments about how unwilling Planchet was to pay his laundry bills. (Gilbert only knew about this because he’d had to listen to Planchet’s side of the same exchange for the last several months.) 

 

“You know officers, Papa, their servants are always cheating them. If he says I will get ten dollars and a fire in my room, then I will get it.”

 

Her father considered this. “You did not seem so agreeable to the idea yesterday, Margaret. Your mother said you came home crying. What’s changed?”

 

Gilbert stopped breathing, the better to hear her answer. Several days ago she’d been rudely reminded (again!) that he had a wife waiting at home. (A wife who hated him, but a wife nonetheless.) Several days ago she probably wished him dead and wanted nothing more to do with him.

 

Margaret’s usually strong voice was shaking. “I...He needs care, Papa. General Washington depends upon it. And you know how Colonel Hamilton speaks of our alliance with France. Would you leave him with one of the other nurses?” Gilbert had no experience with  _ the other nurses,  _ but if they were anything like the other laundrywomen about whom Planchet complained, (inattentive, lazy slatterns) he was sure he understood what Margaret meant.

 

“So, it’s up to my daughter to save the whole war, is it?” She must have nodded, for he gave another dry chuckle, and must have kissed her cheek or goosed her bottom or some other small, silly affectionate gesture, for she murmured ‘Papa!’ in quiet indignation. “As it usually is. Very well.” The two of them made their way back inside the tent.

 

“I agree to your terms, sir,” He declared gravely, fixing Gilbert with a diplomat’s serious stare. “My daughter’s service for two months, at the rate of ten dollars a month, and five now, up front, in hard currency, for traveling expenses.” The gravity in his eyes told Gilbert in his quiet way that these terms were now non-negotiable. 

 

“I shall have Planchet give you your money directly,” Gilbert said with a bow of his head. 

 

“What time shall she be here tomorrow, sir?” Mr. Frances asked, still all buisness. Margaret, at his shoulder, was silent and grave, her face a little pale. 

 

But he had little time to consider the singular beauty of Margaret at her most conflicted, for Mr. Frances had asked a question, and in truth, Gilbert hadn’t the faintest idea when they planned to leave. (He had assumed that when they were ready for him they would simply come to carry him out, and left the rest of the logistics to his valet, who would doubtless find him in the way otherwise.) “I shall have you arrange it with Planchet,” he said, trying to sound authoritative on his lack of authority.

 

Mr. Frances nodded, bowed again, and then, considering for a moment, held out his hand. Ah, yes, the handshake, the universal American symbol of a bargain struck. Lafayette held out his own hand and the two shook, firmly. (Mr. Frances’ handshake very clearly meant business, and Gilbert hoped his own felt the same. He had listened, once, to Alex as he expounded for five whole minutes on the subject of weak handshakes, and had resolved to improve his at once.) “Best of luck on your recovery, sir,” he said, and the Marquis was quite sure he meant it. 

 

“I am in very excellent hands now,” Gilbert acknowledged with a small nod in Margaret’s direction. Mr. Frances, at least, smiled at that, and Gilbert felt a small kind of relief. Then the both of them were gone again, speaking with Planchet outside, and Gilbert felt himself relax.

 

It had been a long three days. But his leg hurt less, and his heart, too, was on the mend.

  
Perhaps this convalescence would not be so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of episode 3.4, I was a little leery to post this chapter. But Margaret does get the benefit of washing Gilbert's wound first, so hopefully it's not too too terrible.
> 
> Regarding the wound -- I read a bunch of different accounts of Lafayette's wound at the Battle of the Brandywine. The first couple were unspecific, saying only that he was shot in the leg. So I made an executive decision and had the ball hit him in the thigh -around the same place that Arnold is injured. Later readings revealed the shot was most definitely in his calf -- some accounts have his boot filling with blood. I decided to keep the calf wound because I think it's a little more dramatic, and it increases the time he needs to spend in recovery. Since I'm already playing fast and loose with the historical record, I hope you will pardon me this further amendment.
> 
> Nurses in the continental army really did receive about two dollars a month in pay, and sergeants about eight dollars -- when money could be found to pay them.
> 
> In his memoirs, Lafayette remembers Washington saying that the surgeons should treat him 'like a son of mine' which I included here because I thought it was a beautiful sentiment -- and appropriately emotionally charged for Margaret to hear. (He also makes a joke about being laid out on a dinner table and cracks a joke about not getting eaten, but I couldn't fit that in.)
> 
> and Margaret's dad! We met him in chapter...four. He was a little drunk at the time, so we didn't really meet him.
> 
> So this chapter ten. Holy Moly. When I started this last year I never thought I would get this far, and this chapter marks the end of the really solid prepared material I have. If you've been enjoying La Fille (and I know a bunch of you have!) a comment, of any size, goes a long way towards making me feel like this is a good project to keep working on. (I take suggestions, too!)
> 
> Thanks for reading, guys. Your support means a lot.


	11. Parte Onze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The decision has been made -- The Marquis de Lafayette is to be moved to Bethlehem for his recovery. And of course, his valet and his nurse shall go with.

It was an uneventful and overcast day when the time came for Gilbert to be moved to Bethlehem. His nurse having forbid him the three hour ride sitting in a carriage, he was to be carried by litter down to a kind of covered farm wagon, the better to spend the journey in a recumbent posture. For his comfort, she said.

 

Gilbert was quite sure of the relative wisdom of this choice, having found merely sitting up in bed to be something of a chore, but the choice of carts (and the state of the roads between the capital and Bethlehem) left much to be desired where  _ comfort _ was concerned. (Though it was not as if she were making the journey in any different circumstances -- a hard wooden seat up front with the driver was to be her perch for the whole of the trip.)

 

When a man is thirsty, he will dream of water; when hungry, of vast tables of food. And when he is in need of good cheer, he dreams of home.

 

After spending so much time among the small houses and  _ habitments _ of Pennsylvania, it was strange for Gilbert's mind to return to the vast passageways and gardens of Versailles. But it was his home, his residence for some years before coming to America -- the place where all his dreams had once been built.  In his dream, the sun was shining, bright and warm on the white steps down to the gardens below. In the dream he was walking with a group of friends and had stopped to observe a group of ladies on the path below, talking and chattering under their picturesque hats. One of the gentlemen in the group laughed, and the women turned, with much fan fluttering, and giggled in their general direction. 

 

And, half-hidden in the middle of the crowd, there was Margaret. 

 

Yes, certainly it was she underneath that wide-brimmed bergere brimming with silk flowers, smiling graciously at him from behind her fan. (He knew she was smiling -- for why else would her eyes crinkle so, and the light dance on her face in such a way?) She wore a dress of fine patterned silk, a whole garden of flowers in every color imaginable playing across wide, panniered skirts, her sleeves tipped with expansive falls of snowy lace. A pair of diamond earrings framed her face, and a long curl of exquisitely dark hair rested on one shoulder, begging to be trailed around a waiting finger. (Preferably while its mistress' face surveyed one with a knowing, pleased smile.)

 

She was majestic --  a queen of all she surveyed. He would dress her like that every day of the week, if he were allowed. (Her usual costume was so severe and dark -- the better not to show any stains, of course. But how charming she would look in white.) 

 

Gilbert smiled and allowed himself the pleasure of descending the steps to take her hand and kiss it, her skin soft and sunwarmed under his lips. The ladies around them were obligingly silent, the only sound a few bees buzzing in the hedge nearby and the quiet, nearly imperceivable flutter of Margaret’s breathing, and his own. The whole world seemed to have stopped just for them. 

 

Oh, and then he was kissing her, kissing her as he would kiss his lover, indecently, irreverently, with no regard for the people surrounding them, or the garden, the kind of kiss reserved for dark corners at masquerade parties and locked bedrooms. Her parasol dropped noiselessly away, and suddenly her arms were tangled around his back, and she was kissing him back, the way she had kissed him all those nights ago in his tent when she was trying to tell him she was so afraid she had lost him, and he was trying to tell her there was no power on earth that would force him to leave her. He felt the silk flowers along the front of her dress crush between them, the well-formed seams of her bodice underneath his fingers, and was considering leading her away to find the nearest bit of lawn to oblige her silent, unspoken want when she pulled away (come now, was this his dream or hers?) and merely smiled at him, tilting her hat a little to the right and backing away, looking pleased with herself. She knelt to retrieve her parasol, her eyes not leaving his, biting her lip a little in a most engaging manner, and joined the rest of the ladies to continue their stroll. Gilbert found himself falling forward, watching her go, and picked himself up just before he lost his balance entirely. 

 

God, that was a woman.

 

Well, at least that part was  _ his  _ dream -- Margaret wouldn't be such a tease. Or would she? When she was the daughter of a well-respected man, and had a house inside which she could hide, would she have been the sort that flirted, danced, and lead men on a little with those wonderfully dark eyes? When she had less to lose in the game, how would she play?

 

It was a question he had found himself asking often over the last few days, playing over in his head her kisses - for they were wild when they wanted to be, when she forgot herself.  _ What sort of woman was she, before all of this?  _ He knew that she had changed -- for they had spoken, a little, of her life before the war, of her father’s occupation as a counting house clerk and the reduction in their family circumstance. But never really about  _ her  _ and who she had been before all of this had happened. Had she flirted, been courted? Been  _ won?  _ She knew his history -- but he knew little of hers.

 

A question for another time -- the soporfic calm promised by the dream beckoned him back, and he turned his mind back to the garden, watching Margaret leave. The whole day passed before him in an instant, the sun rising and setting, crowds passing before him in the blink of an eye until it was night, and the moon was soft and silver on the garden's many fountains, and the whole of the palace was alight with candles. Up the steps he climbed, his movements mechanic and slow, climbing through the crowds of people following some unseen muse through the crowds towards the heart of the festivities.

 

And there again she was -- in the middle of everything, and yet completely, compellingly alone, an invisible axis on which everyone else seemed to turn and bend, a goddess come from another realm to survey her subjects. While all about her the court fluttered and simpered in pastel pinks and washed-out whites, hair powdered and faces painted, she wore a gown of deep blue, spangled over with stars, holding a silver arrow in her hand like a sceptre, Diana incarnate, her hair still dark and inviting, the curl still begging to be touched.

 

Again she smiled, and Gilbert felt his whole body flush with pleasure as she tapped the shaft of the arrow with a single elegant fingertip. Here was not the shy and humble laundrymaid, who bit back what she meant to say and bobbed her curtsies readily -- here was the bold woman Gilbert knew lay lurking somewhere behind that servile creature.

 

The crowd parted obligingly, his steps soundless amidst the general noise, but as he reached out to kiss her, embrace her, she merely smiled and pulled away, leading him into a figured like a dance, the two of them circling each other with transfixed stares until the circle closed enough that their faces almost touched. Then she was leading him out of the room and away from the noise, glancing over her shoulder as she went, the silver arrow glinting at her side like a sorcerer's wand, enchanting him onwards until the corridors were empty and the light was low. 

 

Then she was leaning back against the wall of the corridor, and he was leaning up against her and searching furiously at her skirts, and then...

 

A particularly hard rut in the road caused everything in the cart to jump, and Gilbert jolted awake, painfully thrown from the pleasant fiction he'd been constructing in his head back into Pennsylvania. Looking around to see where they were, he was disappointed -- the view out of the back of the cart had changed little -- save that now it appeared to be raining. The air, certainly, was colder. "Nearly there, Monsieur," Planchet reassured him, mistaking the cause of his master's look of disappointment.

 

Gilbert tried to settle back into his litter  as one might settle into a bed on a particularly cold day and got nothing but hard planks in the process. Well, if it was only for a few more hours…

 

He closed his eyes, but the spell was broken -- and he was rather afraid if he slid further into that fiction his valet might begin to notice.  _ Am I a boy of fifteen again?  _ Gilbert thought morosely to himself, remembering a half-dozen furtively enacted adolescent fantasies in the dark of the dormitory at the College du Plessis, and the barracks of the Musketeers. (He’d been found out, eventually, the older boys laughing and dragging him off to get a real girl when they were in Metz. He could see her face now, sad eyes and pale skin and limp blonde hair that didn’t quite want to curl, with a faded silk flower tucked up into it, but he couldn’t remember her name.)

 

He entertained himself for the next several hours, as he had on several very boring staff rides, by reviewing the drill book in his head, going over every figure and formation and its proper name -- a dull exercise, to be sure, but something to occupy his mind. After that he conjugated verbs, first in French and then in English, and then, just to see if he could, in the limited Latin of his youth. He was just moving on to seeing how much of the Odyssey he could still remember from memory when the wagon pulled to a stop, and he glanced out the open back, seeing farm buildings and the remains of a road.

 

“We’re here,” Planchet announced, moving down from his seat on Gilbert’s trunk to descend their conveyance and take a look at the house. Gilbert turned slightly, his leg throbbing with the sudden shift, and struggled to hear outside. 

 

“They said the minister would be here,” he heard Planchet tell Margaret. “The latch is out.”

 

“Mr. Abrams, if you would be so kind as to help Mr. Planchet move the Marquis -- we’ll take him inside, before the weather turns again.” Margaret sounded very sure of herself, very decisive. And sure enough, the carter and Planchet appeared at the wagon’s end, Planchet climbing up to bodily move his stretcher, as carefully as they could, out the end of the wagon and down until they could carry it between them. Gilbert had never been so happy for a change of scene in his life, the gray of the canvas covering giving way to the gray of a recently stormy sky as the two men handed him down from the wagon’s not inconsiderable height. Gilbert gripped the sides of his stretcher and prayed he would not fall.

 

And then Margaret’s face, peering down. “Feeling all right?” she asked, touching his shoulder gently. He smiled, nodded, not trusting himself to speak. “You’ll be inside in just a minute -- hopefully we’ll miss the rain.”

 

He could see little, from his recumbent posture, but he could make out a farm, with a little fenced yard, and then up, up, two brief steps and inside the door to the house, the timbers of the ceiling slowly moving into focus above his head. He looked sideways, watching Margaret’s face fall a little.  What was it that she saw?  _ Not what she expected, then.  _ “Just down on the floor here, please,” she said, finally, remembering herself. 

 

Gilbert craned his neck to the side, taking in the rest of the room and realizing the source of Margaret’s dismay -- the place was practically unfurnished. A fireplace stood along the far wall, and a chair, of the ordinary wooden kind, sat near it, but he could see no other furnishing.  _ They’ve given us an empty house.  _ Well, but what had been expected? It was not as though he were a  _ truly  _ important man.

 

There was a knock on the doorframe, and both Margaret and Planchet turned. “Are you the nurse?" A man of middle years, soberly dressed, stepped into the room, hat in hand. "Georg Boeckel -- I'm one of the overseers of the farms here." He held out his hand, and Margaret shook it, curtseying a little in an abbreviated style.

 

"Mr. Boeckel -- I was...expecting your minister, I think?”

 

“He found himself unable to come, and sent me instead. We did not know when you should be arriving.”

 

“I see.” 

 

The Moravian looked around, frowning a little at the empty room. "I should apologize -- the family that lived here was ...not of our faith. They settled here, for a time, and improved the place a great deal, but...did not find what they were seeking, and moved late last year. We had little use for such a building, and left it be.  We didn't know what might be needed. There's a bed, upstairs, and some chairs, and a table, in the kitchen, but... little else. It was thought that he might stay at the Hospital at the inn, but when they heard he was bringing his manservant, and a nurse…”He trailed off again, shrugging a little. “We thought this might do better, but it was short notice. I chopped some wood, yesterday, and my wife and daughters came earlier to sweep, and burn sage in the rooms upstairs. They didn't like to think of a sick man coming to an unclean house."

 

"You must send them my thanks, Mr. Boeckel," Margaret said. "There is some camp furniture, which we shall put upstairs, a desk and some stools, and his traveling trunk. But...a few chairs, perhaps, for this room, or a table. If they can be spared. I do not wish to be a bother and I know you have many other concerns, in your hospitals."

 

"And a bed for yourself, ja?" Mr. Boeckel smiled. "I think nurses need some sleep themselves. There's a mattress upstairs, already filled, and another empty, with straw in the barn for filling. Not enough time for featherbeds, I'm afraid."

 

"I’ve slept in tents these past few months -- any bed will do me,” Margaret said lightly, making the overseer smile. “The Marquis’ manservant can sleep on his cot. And after today the Marquis will be most grateful for any bed that doesn't move, I'm sure.” She glanced down, aware that she was speaking for him as if his wound had suddenly rendered him mute, and not merely lame, but he did not move to correct her. He was tired. He wished nothing more than rest.  "If you will excuse me, Mr. Boeckel, I should see to him now -- it's been a very long day, and he will probably want to sleep soon. But I should like to meet your daughters, and thank them, if that is permitted."

 

"We will take you on a tour of the Single Sisters home, Miss Frances. Liesel would enjoy showing you about."

 

“You are most kind.”

 

Boeckel looked around, and, his mission finished, bowed a little and departed, leaving Margaret, Planchet, and the carter, Abrams, in the empty front parlor. “I’d better see what’s upstairs,” Margaret announced. “We’ll need a fire in the kitchen, and then I’ll see to dinner. Mr. Planchet --” she stopped, probably because she was now aware, for what seemed the first time, that she was actually ordering the Frenchman about -- a circumstance that was likely to cause some indignation on his part.

 

But none came. “Yes, Miss Frances?” he prompted, his tone short but polite. 

 

“...The Marquis’s baggage should probably be moved upstairs,” she said, tenatively, as she tried to reorder what had been a command into a softer kind of suggestion.

 

“ _ Parfait, _ ” Planchet announced, giving an almost Prussian click to his heels and turning to the Carter. “ _ Bien, déplacez-le! Vite, vite! _ ”

 

And then they were gone, Abrams and Planchet out to the wagon for his things, and Margaret upstairs to survey her new domain -- leaving Gilbert lying on his stretcher in the front parlor, giving him the opportunity to sit up, carefully, and survey this new front room from the slight elevation of his elbows.

 

A glass window overlooking a farmyard, paned with glass in good repair -- one wall with a fireplace, a good stone hearth and the fire irons still in place, manteled with an enormous piece of timber, the back of the stones dark with frequent use. Not an elegant space, by any stretch of imagining.  _ But ours, for the time being,  _  Gilbert thought to himself, lowering himself back down and studying the beams of the ceiling, noticing the pattern of cracks in the plaster. Could there be any more beautiful word?  _ Ours. _

 

He heard Margaret’s steps on the stairs, but she did not return to his side, disappearing into the smaller room at the back of the house, doubtless the kitchen of which Boeckel had spoken earlier. A door opening, and then silence for a while, until Planchet and Abrams came through the front door, grunting with his chest between them.

 

It was quite the production, moving Gilbert’s belongings as well as his person upstairs without breaking anyone or upsetting him from his stretcher; the stairs were steep and he would have preferred to try and walk them, but Margaret was having none of it. 

 

Finally, after several very close calls, he was upstairs, and if Gilbert had not been tired after his four hour jolting by wagon, he was exhausted after thirty minutes of fraught passage up the stairs in his litter. So exhausted, in fact, that he was in his new bed scarcely five minutes before falling, soundly, into sleep, completely oblivious to the bumps and rattles as Abrams and Planchet moved his things into his sickroom, dreaming, once more, of one dark haired  _ seductrice _ in blue.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to Calamity Bean for the idea for the dream sequence in this chapter. Several months ago, lamenting the (then) lack of kissing in this story, she kindly suggested Gilbert have a daydream of such. And I liked the idea too much to take it out. (dress based on this gorgeous artpiece on tumblr: http://mercurygray.tumblr.com/post/134930745320/pinklikeme-version-of-a-new-years-card-i-did )
> 
> As chapters go, I'm sorry. It's not much of an update, I know. I was too busy being distracted by Lafayette in 3.09 to come up with anything better. 
> 
> And I've kind of come to the end of my preplanned material. I know what has to happen in the next bit and it's, quite frankly, not very interesting. Historical Lafayette even says so in his letter to his wife - "...all I have to do for it to heal is lie on my back for a while - which puts me in a very bad humor." In a later letter, also to Adrienne, he puts it slightly differently: "To put the best face on it, I could tell you that mature reflection had induced me to remain in bed for several weeks, sheltered from all danger. But I must admit I was invited to stay there because of a very slight wound to the leg." 
> 
> But information about his time in Bethlehem is a bit thin on the ground. In the second letter quoted above, Lafayette writes "I am at this moment in the solitude of Bethlehem...this establishment is truly touching and very interesting. The people here lead a gentle and peaceful life." And that's it. So I have a bit of a blank slate.
> 
> And this is usually the point in my writing where I lose steam and stop. I know myself. It's what I do.
> 
> So this is your moment to shine, readers! Do you have something you'd like to see from Margaret and Gilbert? (Or Planchet?) Unresolved business you want resolved? Another character you want to appear? (I'm thinking Henry Laurens might pay a visit.) 
> 
> If you've been reading this story and enjoying it, I'd love to hear what I'm doing right -- or what I'm doing wrong. (The timeline, yes, I know, the timeline. I lose sleep over how bad the timeline of this story is against the historical record. But anything else is fair game!)


	12. Parte Douze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hardly anyone asks for a valet's opinion - but Hubert Planchet has them in spades, and there isn't much he doesn't see...

Bethlehem reminded Planchet of home.

****

Not Paris, which had been his home for most of his adult life, but his other home, the place of his birth - a little farm a ways outside the city, near a village that had no name - a place he had not thought about for a long, long time, where he had not been known as Planchet, but by a different name, one that very few people now remembered or used - Hubert.

****

He did not remember much of his childhood - there was not much in it worth remembering - but he had begun life as a farmer’s son, and he could, on occasion, call to mind the memory, dim but there, of riding into Paris on the back of a farmer's cart, sitting amidst bushels of cabbage, and marveling at how tall and grand some of the buildings were. He remembered the walk with his father from the market into the residential district, and standing in front of a pair of huge, imperious doors. 

****

He also remembered the look of utter disdain his father got from the man who opened them. 

****

"Tradesmen around the back!"

****

"Please, sir, I'd like to see the Duc."

****

"I'm sure you would, but he's not an exhibit at a fair. Tradesmen around back." 

****

"I was told he takes petitions today." His father's hand had been heavy on his shoulders, keeping him close. The footman's scowl did not abate, but at last they were allowed inside.

****

It was the largest building Hubert had ever been in. (But what building isn't big, at six?)  His footsteps had echoed on the floors. They were shown into an antechamber, filled with more people wearing clothing in colors Hubert had never seen before, and were told to wait. It was agony. Hubert was tired, their trip having started well before dawn, and he wanted nothing more than to sit down on one of the little spindly legged chairs along the edge of the room and swing his legs, but his father rebuked him strongly when he tried this, and he remained standing, sullenly studying the pattern in the woodwork. And, to add further insult, the entire room was nearly silent, save for the whispering of the ladies' dresses as they moved and the quiet, subdued murmurings of everyone behind their hands, their eyes following Hubert and his father like a bad smell.

****

His father pulled him close and said nothing.

****

Finally a door opened, and another man with another disdainful look called his father's name and moved them into another room, this one empty except for one man, with very long hair and a brilliantly colored coat, who was studying some maps on a table. Hubert decided he loved the coat, and wondered what he would have to do in life to one day own such a garment. Eventually, the man turned, and, recognizing his father, shook hands and exchanged warm greetings. 

****

He remembered little of what was said, but he did remember that his father looked overwhelmed, and sad, holding his hat in his hands as he said something about food, and the little house, and lots of siblings, and the war, while the rich man nodded and agreed. Finally he knelt down, his eyes right on Hubert's level.

****

"Your father fought for me in the Spanish Netherlands. Would you like to fight for me also?"

****

Hubert had shaken his head. His father didn't talk about the war, but he knew it had made his shoulder hurt, and made him sad sometimes, and then he drank too much, and made Mama angry. The rich man laughed and had ruffled his hair. "Not a soldier, then?" 

And that had been that. With one small conversation he had gone from being a farmer's son to the stableboy to Adrien Maurice de Noailles, one of the most powerful men in France. 

****

Of course he had not known that then, but he did know that the Duc was very rich, that he had a lot of horses, and that he was a soldier, and a very famous, very good one at that.  So Hubert was a stableboy, and then a groom, and then a footman, rising through the ranks of the Noailles household as Adrien Maurice was succeeded by his son Louis, and Louis' children grew up and married and had sons and daughters of their own, until, after many years as one of several valets de chambre to the Duc's son, Jean-Louis, he was offered the post of  _ premier valet de chambre _ to the Duc's new grandson in law -- a tall, gangly youth called the Marquis de Lafayette.

****

Planchet had come a long way since that ride on the produce cart, and nearly forty years of service in the Noailles household had left him entitled to a few disdainful looks of his own, as well as a whole trunkful of beautifully cut and wonderfully tailored jackets, in the current style. (How people would have laughed to see him wearing a suit like the one the Duc had been wearing all those years ago! It would have been quite out.)

****

The Marquis was young, and had been raised away from court, and required, as his father-in-law explained to Planchet in private, a steady hand to guide him through the etiquette of court. "He will need someone to answer his questions - with the right answers, you understand." Jean-Louis (himself the Duc d'Ayen, until his father’s title as the Duc de Noailles came to him) had explained. "A steady voice -- a moderator. And... should you find...any...corrections you yourself cannot make..." The Duc trailed off, his gaze penetrating and direct. "Alert me." 

****

And Planchet, who had spent the last forty years learning what those right answers were, had smiled, and nodded, and accepted the post and all its responsibilities, including, but not limited to, spying on his new master for the sake of his old one.

****

The Duc had been right on one count; the Marquis was in great need of moderation. His exuberance for anything and everything was exhausting, and Planchet sometimes found it hard to both keep up and keep a steady face as young Gilbert went on with his busy social calendar and his military training. Of course his young wife could not be expected to be the voice of reason all the time - and she, too, would have a commission for Planchet. 

****

"You must watch him for me," Adrienne had ordered him imperiously one day, when Gilbert was on his way to Metz with the Noailles regiment for training. "You must tell me what he does, Planchet, and who he sees."

****

It was a simple request, he thought, from a young girl afraid for her marriage. And Planchet accepted it. Now he watched his master for the Duc, and for the Duc's daughter. 

****

To his mind, there was nothing wrong in it. He was a servant, and a good one, and he took his orders without question. He did not take sides, nor did he offer his true opinion, even when asked for it. He had always said that his first allegiance was to the family, and to that he held, until he finally began to see how the cards had fallen in this marriage between Gilbert and Adrienne, and he felt his loyalty slowly, subtly, shifting.

****

One could not help being swayed when one's young master was nearly brought to tears by a lashing-out from his wife, embarrassed by his performance at a recent party, and then barred from his wife's bedchamber, and then, to add insult to injury, to act as though none of this had happened and they were the happiest couple in the world the next time they were to be seen out in public together. The Marquis had brought a tremendous amount of money to their marriage, but Adrienne had brought elevated rank, and the certain knowledge that a good name counted for far more in the glittering world of Versailles than Gilbert's millions.

****

And in that moment, when this young man who had all the opportunities in the world before him was weeping into his servant’s jacket begging his valet to tell him what he might do to gain his wife’s favor again, Planchet began to think of himself as less of a servant of the Noailles, and more of a servant to the house of Lafayette. His support was found in small things; making absolutely sure of what everyone else would be wearing at a court function and making sure his master was dressed just as richly, if not better, rehearsing speeches and small talk with the young man, correcting his posture, his dance steps, his manner of walking. He made sure the Marquis’ friends were of the right sort of people, not the kind of flatterers and sycophants who love a young man with money. Everything just so. He knew that his master thought little of him for this, but it was not for Gilbert to love him. Planchet was a servant; he was simply doing his job.

****

(Or perhaps not so simply. Plenty of servants would have let him fail and laughed about it. But Planchet wouldn't admit this; he had his pride, and his reputation to consider. If it got around he was soft, there’d be no end to trouble.)

****

When Gilbert began making plans to leave for America, of course it was Planchet he told to pack his trunks. The valet could not help thinking, then, that perhaps, just perhaps, he should remember his commission, given so long ago, and speak to the Duc d’Ayen about this, perhaps let the Duc persuade him of the folly of the venture.  _ But then he would know it was you who told the Duc,  _ another part of his mind reminded him.  _ And then who would he bring with?  _

****

No, better to leave the Duc out of this -- if then only so Planchet could go with and make sure the young Marquis was looked after in America. He packed for every eventuality he could think of, knowing that something would get lost and something stolen, something eaten by wild beasts or...whatever other kind of monsters lurked in the wilds across the Atlantic. And then he rode with Gilbert to his ship, suffered his way across the Atlantic, and, when they had finally arrived, bullied their domestic arrangements into some semblance of proper order.

****

He was a servant trained at the court of France, and he had a duty to the reputation of those standards to uphold, and he would not let anything, including lost luggage, get in the way of that.

****

And if the whole buisness made him a little prickly and bad-tempered, and not well-liked by anyone else, well. That was the price he was going to have to pay. 

****

It might have surprised someone to hear this, but Planchet rather liked the Americans. He liked their directness, their buisness-like way of doing things. No flowery court language with a dozen different meanings. He liked that it was simple enough to get things done, that you didn’t have to owe favors to ten different people simply to get a better seat at a table. He liked that it was merit that directed promotions, and not simply one’s family. 

****

And he loved the women.

****

Not in  _ that _ way, of course - he had hardly had time for  _ liaisons  _ at court and he was not about to invite that kind of  _ catastrophe _ into his life now. But there was something so refreshing about these women after all the little chambermaids at court, batting their eyelashes and trying to see if they could curry enough favor with you so that you could get them into your master’s bed.

****

When he had started seeking for a new laundress to handle his master’s growing pile of dirty linen, and gone to the young woman Monsieur Hamilton had recommended, and named his price, she had looked him square in the eye, named a higher one, and declared that she couldn’t do it for any less. 

****

Planchet decided he liked her immediately and hid it behind a tremendous scowl. 

****

Margaret Frances was forthright, fair, hard-working, never left a job half-finished, and she was a skilled hand with stains, which was a quick way into Planchet’s heart on its own. And - the crowning glory of it all - she  _ argued _ with him. A surefire way to gain his affection, since an argument meant that one’s convictions were heartfelt, and not put on for the sake of gaining favor. She endeared himself to him all the more when she mended his master’s arm (he had hidden his fear behind a bit of annoyance about the proper care of his lordship’s clothes) and kept her place secure when her work in the laundry continued to be exemplary.

****

Of course he knew when his master began writing to her. (How Gilbert thought he would get away with it was beyond Planchet; the valet was practically Gilbert’s shadow.) He watched the letters pile up in the Marquis’ writing case and thought about Adrienne’s instructions.  _ You must tell me what he does, and who he sees.  _

****

But then he watched Gilbert smile as Margaret went by, and decided, again, that his loyalty lay elsewhere. They were discreet enough about the business, not openly parading about camp like it was said one of the British Generals did in New York. And, under Margaret’s influence, he had watched Gilbert grow up. Not for the Marquis any more the flash-in-the-pan obsessions he had sailed under at court, a new, passionate love declared every week, a new beauty proclaimed his muse before all other muses. He settled down, sat still, paid attention. Some of this, Planchet knew, was the influence of other stars -- General Washington, and all his young officers, who had known from younger ages greater responsibility than his master ever had. But Margaret, too, had her own influence. And Planchet was glad of it.

****

Of course it was to Margaret Frances that he went when the Marquis returned with a bullet in his leg -- were there any other options but her?

****

So now in Bethlehem Hubert Planchet remembered his roots as a country boy.

****

The first few weeks had been difficult, as they struggled, between the two of them, to make an empty house into a home. But they managed - or rather, Margaret managed and Planchet marveled.

****

“I think if you scrub that any more you’ll tear a hole.” The valet looked up from the pannikin of water where he’d been working on one of Gilbert’s collars, surprised that he’d been so deep in thought.

****

He made a small sound of annoyance and decided she was probably right, and went at it for a bit longer so as not to prove her right - a small bit of theatre she saw straight through.  

****

“Do you need anything in town?” she asked, stacking the wood she’d been chopping all morning in the woodbox next to the fireplace.  “I thought I might get a bit of meat for supper.”

****

“White thread,” he said, his mind running through his cases upstairs. “And a bit of horehound - Monsieur has a cough, with this  _ changement climatique _ . I’ll come with,” he added imperiously. “The color must be right.”

****

Margaret nodded, her smile barely hidden. This was the game they were playing now, the one where he pretended to barely tolerate her and she pretended (very badly) to barely tolerate him. He knew he wasn’t fooling her, but he had his reputation to uphold. And he thought, just a little, that it made her smile, and when Margaret was smiling, Gilbert was smiling, and that left him one less thing to worry about.

****

He fetched his coat and screwed his hat onto his head, trying to rub a bit of shine into the battered felt. One couldn’t let standards slide just because one was away from the army. Margaret was waiting in the kitchen, with a fresh apron on and a light shawl wrapped around her shoulders, cap pinned just so in case the wind came by. That was another thing he approved of - Miss Frances would not let standards slide, either.

****

She had come from a good family -- he had known that before, but it had been brought home, truly, as he watched how she kept the house. She cleaned and cooked not as though it were second nature, but rather as though she were remembering something, thinking about it as she went. She had had servants, once -- he was sure of it. But that did not stop her from getting her hands dirty, or her apron stained.

****

“Should we get apples?” she mused aloud, as they began the three mile walk into town. “They’re nearly in season. I could dry a few for a pie, later.”

****

“We won’t be here all winter,” Planchet observed.

****

Her face fell. “Of course.” The words came out as though she were just realizing this, and Planchet had a realization of his own -- that she was becoming comfortable here, enough to begin forming the idea of permanence, the idea that they could continue living here for...forever.

****

He was unsure whether Gilbert felt the same way; the Marquis seemed content with his books and his letters, but Planchet knew his ways; he would tire of this eventually, wish to return to the Army and to glory. For all that he joked that he, too, was a country boy, Gilbert du Motier had needs, and constant entertainment was one of them. Or if not entertainment, employment -- currently being supplied in a flood of letters from what seemed like every Frenchman in America begging for a recommendation to the Congress, or to Washington, or some other general for a commission in the Army.

****

That, at least, was keeping him busy -- and there were some mornings where Planchet heard his master consulting with Margaret over the matter of one’s man’s position or another.

****

“If you say he is a drunkard and a liar, why should you recommend him to the Congress?”

****

“But his uncle…” 

****

“Is not here! Can you not say you lost the letter, if he writes again?” 

****

“But he will write again.” 

****

“Then... we’ll ...lose that one, too.” And then there was laughter. Almost always there was laughter.

****

He could not recall a time that Adrienne had made Gilbert laugh, nor a time that Gilbert had done the same for her. 

****

Adrienne de Noailles had always been a serious child, interested only in following the precepts set out by her mother and her nurses, always striving to be the perfect courtier her parents wished her to be. Moderate of voice, delicate in her movement, reserved in manner, and a perfect student of _ l’etiquette _ , the elaborate set of rules that governed the celestial movement of the court. This was how she was to succeed in life -- by being witty and pretty and staying in orbit with the best people. And by marrying well, of course. The first day Gilbert had come to the house, and made his bows to the Duc de Noailles and the Duc d’Ayen from behind his grandfather, Planchet had watched from the side of the room, taking in the wobble in the young man’s bow, the silent, hidden disdain in Adrienne’s face as she, too, took notice of the error. “What did you think of the Marquis,  _ ma chere _ ?” her mother had asked her later. 

****

She considered this question with all due politeness. “Someone should teach him how to bow.”

****

And with that, her mind was made. It did not matter that he was young, that he was rich, or that he adored her; for Adrienne, Gilbert was always just one enormous mistake. And one did not laugh with mistakes; one looked down one’s nose at them -- or ignored them entirely. And ignoring Gilbert came very easily. It could have been such a happy marriage -- but she had learned her lessons in dignity too well.

****

Planchet only wondered why this buisness of a lover hadn’t come sooner.  Oh, there’d been several women he’d chased, ineffectually, because it was a fashionable thing young men did, but none where the admiration had been reciprocated. He’d watched his master gather his continually wounded pride and retreat into his books and his military career and his debating societies, throwing himself into those things as one might throw oneself at an affair. The women of the court were as Adrienne was -- interested only in the additional glitter one’s partner added to one’s dress.

****

Not so  _ les Americaines _ ! From the minute he stepped off the boat the Marquis was an object of desire, smiled at and fawned over by nearly every young lady who happened to cross his path, from the lowest of the laundrymaids to the most august daughters of the landowning classes. He was tall, he wore his uniform well, his accent and manners added a touch of l’ _ exoticisme _ to his person -- and, of course, he was fabulously rich. (All the world over, the truism remains the same: Money talks.)

****

He could have had his pick of twelve dozen different women, but who did his heart fly to? The one woman who didn’t throw herself at him - who, indeed, played rather a good game of hard to get. (Planchet admired that, too.)

****

They were in town now, and Planchet turned his mind away from his meditations to the business at hand - the shopping.

****

Bethlehem was, like little country villages the world over, a small place, everyone knowing everyone else, and the religious traditions of the Moravians made it seem more monastery than town. Two foreign-born visitors would have, in older days, been quite a cause for comment, but with the recent arrival of the army some miles away, and the requisition of one of their largest buildings as a hospital, the quiet village of Bethlehem had taken on the character of a booming metropolis, complete with all the sights and sounds therein - the shout of carters and the rumble of wheels, the raised, mixed voices of the men superintending the movement of patients and goods from outside the hospital in, the occasional cluck and flutter of livestock underfoot.

****

Margaret stopped and considered their options. “The hospital first, I think.”

****

Planchet nodded and followed. ‘The Hospital’, as it was now called, was a large stone building, about three stories high, which, in its previous life, had housed the unmarried male members of the Moravian community. It was a rather large, impressive building, at the bottom of a slight hill and in sight of the river, which was precisely why the Army had seen fit to commandeer it for medical use.

****

Inside, however, was no longer filled with the buzz of little workshops, but the low, constant hum of human suffering. No fault of the doctors, of course -- they did what they could with little support. Still, this place...Planchet gathered himself together and remained thankful his master was not forced to seek care here. 

****

Margaret knew her way; she picked her way down a corridor and up the stairs in search of something, or someone, very particular, glancing into the wards until someone spoke.

****

“Miss Frances?”

****

Margaret turned towards the voice. “Doctor Munro!” She sounded as though she had not expected to see the gentleman, but that could hardly have been the case; there were only a few doctors attendant at the hospital and William Munro was one of them. 

****

The young Scotsman’s sleeves were rolled to the elbow and the apron he was wearing showed signs of needing a wash. But Planchet was beginning to appreciate that the creature called ‘physician’ here in America was quite different from the specimens in France. Here no one was afraid to get his hands dirty and frequently appeared half-dressed as a sign of his hard work and accomplishment.  “And Master Planchet  -- good morning, sir. How is the Marquis? I trust you have not come for a doctor on his behalf!”

****

“He is very well, thank you for asking. But he has a slight cold, and a sore throat. I had hoped the hospital had horehound.”

****

Munro’s smile became uneasy. “Sadly, no - we’ve none at hand ourselves. But I might have some licorice root,” he offered quickly, seeing Margaret’s own unease. “And I have heard that there may be a crate of lemons about -- I will see if I can fetch one.” And before Margaret could say otherwise, he was off. Planchet watched this exchange out of the corner of his eye, pretending disinterest as he observed the ward of the hospital. 

****

A room that should have housed twelve was, at present home to nearly thirty -- some three hundred or so soldiers in all, crammed into a building growing rank with disease and putrefaction. Planchet knew Margaret came here sometimes, in her idle time, to help -- though how she could stand the place he did not know. They obviously had need -- Doctor Munro looked as though he had not slept or eaten well in a long time, and there were signs all about the room that betrayed the want of another pair of hands, preferably a woman’s - dirty dishes, unswept floors. It was taking a great deal of effort for Margaret to simply stand still and wait. Planchet caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and watched her tighten her hands on the handle of her basket, fighting back the urge to do something about the mess.

****

“Per’aps we ‘ad better wait outside?” the valet recommended quietly, watching Margaret’s conscience fight with itself. She nodded, and they moved to the corridor, thankfully void of more patients.

****

Exuberant footsteps from the upper floors heralded the return of the doctor, apron flying. In one hand was a jar of dried herb, which he held out to Margaret. And, in the other --  “There was just the one,” he said, holding out the lemon, its rind wildly yellow in the bare whitewashed hall. “No, please,” he insisted, as she made some small sound of protest. “We’ve no putrid throats ourselves just now, and it will rot before it comes of use here.” 

****

She took it, timidly, and tucked it into her basket. “My thanks, Doctor.”

****

“No trouble, truly. Can I be of any further assistance?”

****

“Thank you, no. We should be -”

****

“And I trust you are well?”

****

It was a sudden question, and hastily asked. Planchet, stealing another surreptitious glance at the young doctor, finally realized what he was seeing - the eager desire to fulfill her request, the smile, the enthusiastic greeting. Well, that explained a great many things - such as why he’d gone upstairs when the dispensary was down.  The lemon had been from his personal supplies -- a rare gift indeed, with a blockade in place. He might as well have given Margaret a diamond. It appeared Miss Frances’ charms had another admirer.  

****

Well, he was entitled to his opinions - as long as he kept them to himself, the valet mused protectively.

****

“I’m very well, thank you.” The question had bemused her, and her answer was given with a hint of impatience, as though the state of her health should be perfectly obvious, or not a subject worth conversing on. Obviously the attraction was not mutual. (Planchet would have allowed himself a sigh of relief, if he did not think they would notice.)

****

“Good.” The word hung between them awkwardly for a moment before the doctor remembered himself. “Well, I should let you go; doubtless you’re very busy. Shall we be seeing you again soon, on the wards?”

****

“If his lordship permits,” Margaret said, nodding in farewell and making their exit, Planchet following quietly behind digesting this new piece of information.

****

“Monsieur Munro seems ... _ agréable _ ,” the valet observed as they made their way out of the hospital and back to the market, the licorice root and the lemon wrapped safely in a napkin and hidden in Margaret’s basket.

****

“Most agreeable,” Margaret echoed offhandedly, her mind occupied with other things, like watching the road in front of her. “Mrs. Boeckel should be home -- she’ll know where we can get thread, if she hasn’t any to spare herself.”

****

“ _ Parfait.” _

****

The rest of the town was, like the hospital, beginning to show the wear and tear of life as a garrison town; Soldiers kept guard out of several houses being used for supplies and baggage, while several off-duty men lounged in doorways and outside houses turned to use as barracks, observing the passersby. There were several whistles as Margaret walked past, but she paid them little mind, continuing up the hill and towards the home of George Boeckel, the overseer.

****

There could be no mistaking this house for anything but what it was -- a busy family home. The lane outside was free of trash, the stones leading up to the door well-swept and clean. And here, too, they were known. “Miss Frances!” A lively-eyed girl of twelve, blonde plaits quite escaping her cap, bounded over to make her hellos, practically hanging on Margaret’s arm. “You must come inside, Mama is just starting dinner.”

****

Margaret exchanged an amused smile with Planchet, and the two followed the girl inside to the kitchen, a room similar to the one in their farmhouse except for the extraordinary number of things in it -- a cradle near the fireside, laundry hanging from the rafters, herbs drying out of the sun, pots and tools fixed to walls, waiting their turn at use. There were two women near the fireplace who looked up as they came in, the elder smiling broadly and setting down her knife so she could clean her hands and greet her guests.

****

“ _ Frau _ Frances,  _ so gut sie zu sehen!  _ And Herr Planchet. _ Guten Morgan _ .”

****

“ _ Madame _ Boeckel.” Planchet gave a polite but abbreviated bow and tried not to collide with one of the small children currently underfoot. “ _ Et Mademoiselle _ Liesel.” The teenager at the fireplace made her curtsey, smiling at being so noticed.

****

“We weren’t expecting you today - are you still coming on Thursday for the baking?” the overseer’s wife asked.

****

“Planchet needed thread,” Margaret explained. “And the weather was good today, so the walk wasn’t long. But yes, Thursday. I hadn’t forgotten.”

****

“Barbara, go look in my sewing case for white thread,” Mrs. Boeckel ordered, sending the twelve year old bounding back out of the room. “If I don’t have any go over to Frau Eichen’s.”

****

“Have you gotten any letters from home, Miss Frances?” The girl Liesel asked from her place by the fire. Margaret shook her head. “Not even with all the letters the Marquis gets?”

****

“I’m sure no one’s had time, with the retreat and moving to winter quarters,” Margaret said with a smile. “And I don’t quite make time to write them, either.”

****

Barbara returned, braids still flying, a little wooden threadwinder in her hand. “White!” she proclaimed, presenting it triumphantly to her mother.

****

“Go show Herr Planchet,  _ madchen _ ,” Mrs. Boeckel urged, her hands back to the work at hand.

****

Planchet rummaged in his pockets for his own threadwinder, on which the last remnants of the thread he’d been using previously were clinging for dear life. “ _ Milles merci, Madame - c’est parfait _ .”

****

Margaret and Mrs. Boeckel talked for a little while longer of  small domestic things, bits of conversations from past visits and the promise, again, of the promised visit for the  baking, and finally they were off, back down the road to the farm, leaving the noise and stink of the city behind.

****

Planchet’s mind was still caught up on the subject of wives. 

****

He was thinking, again, of Adrienne, of the letters in Gilbert’s case, the affectionate pages from Margaret and the one, single solitary missive from the Marquise, scolding her husband. He was thinking, also, not of what was written in the letter (for he had not read it; that was a liberty he would not permit himself) but the news that had come with it, brought by Gimat, that Adrienne had a lover, that she, too, had broken their marriage vows. (he could scarcely call himself a valet if he didn’t listen at  _ some  _ doors.)  Gilbert had said very little about it - the afternoon when Gimat had brought the news they had talked, and then Gimat had left, and Gilbert had spent the afternoon with a glass of wine and Margaret’s letters, reading them, in series, one by one, like a kind of novel without a binding.

****

If they were at home and she were another one of his court beauties or his chamber maids, Planchet felt certain they would have already been to bed together. (There wasn’t anything sordid in it - it was just the way of things.) Indeed, after the letter from Adrienne he was sure things would have moved quicker towards that end, but there had been no change; they wrote their letters, stole their walks and their little moments, and continued to dance around each other and an obvious growing attraction. Then, of course, Gilbert had been shot, which had set them back a little, but even now that they were away from the army (and the watchful eyes of Miss Frances’ parents) he was still sure that nothing had happened between them. (It was a small house; he would have known.)

****

Well, but perhaps that was still Miss Frances’ good breeding; a well-behaved girl of the merchant classes wouldn’t go casting her charms about so easily, even if it was for a Marquis. His title meant little here - in America, Gilbert was just another young man whose promises might be as thin as paper and as insubstantial as air. She was, after all, a woman disinclined to chance, a shrewd creature who liked to see the money in her hand before she counted it. What could Gilbert offer her that, say, young William Munro could not? A household of her own, steady income, an affectionate marriage? For Miss Frances desired marriage - how could she not, when she went to the Boeckels and gazed longingly at the family, the daughters with their tidy braids and the baby in the cradle, surrounded by the settled comfort of the kitchen? 

****

“How was town?” Gilbert asked conversationally as Planchet came upstairs to tidy the room and clear away the day’s trash and discarded papers, straightening his master’s books and his bedlinen before Margaret came in to serve the meal.

****

Planchet paused, remembering Doctor Munro’s hopeful glance, the lemon in Margaret’s basket, and the broken wax seal of Adrienne’s letter, sitting in his master’s writing case.

****

“Uneventful, messire.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, thank you - you've made it through the whole story up to this point and, probably, a very long and uncalled-for hiatus. Mille merci à vous - a million thanks to you.
> 
> I decided a while ago we needed a slightly different narrator, and since I'm having a dandy of a time getting into Margaret's head, (Ask me about it later) I decided Planchet needed his own chapter, because everyone seems to love my argumentative middle-aged valet. So you get some backstory, and confirmation that, as you have all suspected, he is a huge softie hiding behind a prickly exterior who totally ships Margaret and Gilbert.
> 
> The man he meets at the beginning of the story, Adrien Maurice, was a famous solider who fought with Louis the 14th - so if you're watching the Canal Plus show Versailles, that's a little before when this starts. Adrien Maurice is Adrienne's great-grandfather, the 3rd Duc de Noailles, and there are several courtesy titles thrown around in there for various other family members.
> 
> There isn't a lot written about the army hospitals in Bethlehem, although the building I reference here is currently owned by a college and is used as the music building - you can visit it on Google Street view!
> 
> Mes excuses to any German speakers in this chapter - everything I read said that the Moravians of Pennsylvania would have been a fairly recent group of immigrants, so I decided to retain some German in their speech, and had to rely on Google Translate.


	13. Parte Treize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After many weeks, Gilbert is finally walking again, and the world is widening, and much that escaped his notice while he was in bed is now becoming clearer.

Gilbert surveyed the stair with a determined eye and took a deep breath before testing the first step, steadying himself against the walls while his legs adjusted to the weight and the now-unfamiliar motion of bending his leg at the knee. For weeks now he had been testing himself by walking back and forth across his room, first with crutches, and then a cane, and then with no help at all. The weather today was fine and he was decided - he would spend some of the day out of doors.

But that, of course, required the surmounting of a rather large obstacle - the stairs. 

He had done them once or twice with Planchet's assistance, but Planchet had been dispatched as a courier to Washington’s camp, and in his absence, he would just have to do them alone. One step at a time it was going to be. 

The second step, and then the third, and by the fourth Gilbert was leaning against the wall gritting his teeth and trying not to shout every obscenity he could think of in three languages.

The wound in his leg had finally healed over, leaving nothing but a rounded pink pucker on his thigh - and two legs that needed to be taught how to walk again. After nearly a month abed they were weak and stiff, and would not quite hold his weight. For the last two weeks he had walked around his room, clinging to the walls, and much of the strength was returning, but the stiffness still remained - Planchet had been dispatched for sweet oil, so they might massage the muscles and move them a little that way.

Five....six...Only four more - he could do it! 

He  _ must _ do it - for if he was bettered by a single flight of stairs, how then would he manage mounting a horse? Benedict Arnold was a prime example of a soldier held back by a wound - one of the army's best commanders, and stuck commanding baggage wains because he could scarcely walk. 

He'd spoken of Arnold to Margaret the other night, fearing the same fate, and she'd rolled her eyes. "General Arnold gave himself no time to heal," she had said. "And his wound was worse than yours - the ball touched the bone and nicked it. He's been injured in that leg twice, and both times he wouldn't stop working at the advice of nearly every physician with the army. He'll limp because the bone won't knit straight - and because he refused to stay abed."

"He didn't have such a pretty nurse as I do," Gilbert had said with a smile, and Margaret had blushed and called him a flatterer. But she had smiled, too.

It was true - a pretty nurse was quite the inducement to health. If she'd been a graying harridan of fifty there was no way on earth Gilbert would be trying the stairs at this early stage - but there was the promise of Margaret and her garden at the end of his trial, and that was all the reward he needed.

Still, he also needed a moment at the foot of the stairs to regain his composure, his leg throbbing with the effort. It would be just as painful going up, he was sure  - but for now, there was sunshine, and fresh air, and the lovely Miss Frances, at present grubbing about in the yard.

Oh, Margaret. She looked different, out in the sunshine. Did he imagine that there were roses in her cheeks that had not been there two months ago? Was his mind playing tricks with him, to say that she looked healthier and happier here? His own little domestic goddess, spading around beets with a trowel, her skirts fanned out behind her. Did he imagine a glimpse of her ankles as she sat up and moved over? 

And was she...singing?

He listened for a while until the words finally came to him, muddled somewhat but still recognizable, if someone listened hard enough. And what he heard made him smile.

_ Aupres de ma blonde, il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, _ _  
_ _ Aupres de ma blonde, il fait bon dormir. _

Her voice trickled off after the verse, humming through the verses she did not know, interspersing a word or two where she thought they fit, half-heard fragments of the song. Someone, it seemed, had been listening to him as he sang to himself and picked up the habit of the tune. Gilbert couldn’t help but join her on the last words of the refrain, and her voice dropped off, suddenly self-conscious - though whether that was for the singing or the dirt on her clothes, he wasn’t sure.

"Gilbert! You shouldn't be out here - you know what Doctor Munro said."

"The good doctor said I should be practicing more," Gilbert replied with a smile, leaning over to pick up Margaret's basket and move it closer to her. "And I grow tired of writing letters from bed. Let me stay out here a while, please. I have not been out in nearly two months - and my leg will not ache so much if I stand."

A frown. "You promise me you will sit down when you feel the least bit faint,” she ordered, by way of concession.

"I promise," Gilbert replied, hand over his heart for emphasis. She did not seem to believe him, but she let him stay, kneeling back down and starting a new search for...whatever it was she was looking for. There was no rhyme or reason to her investigation - the garden barely warranted the name, being only the remnants of a kitchen plot gone wildly to seed after the previous owners had left. There were no longer tidy rows, just plants growing here and there where their progenitors had been left to bolt or drop, to seed and re-seed. Margaret spoke often of how she wished she could do more with it, but they had come too late in the season to make any real progress on that score, and so she merely worked with what God had given her with her windfall fruit.

“Will you not let me help?" he asked, after a while of merely watching.

She considered him a moment, perhaps realizing he was prepared to help whether she said yes or no, and acquiesced. “I’ve need of another onion,” she said, gesturing to the basket so he would know what to look for - the long, stiff leaves of the onion stalk, the vegetable itself bulging and purple at the end.

He hunted through the weeds and overgrown stalks until he found what he was looking for, a whole patch of leafy spades, and grasped two or three until they came free of the ground. 

Margaret looked impressed. “I used to help the gardeners at Chavaniac with their vegetables,” he said with a smile, shaking the dirt from the roots and depositing the onions in the basket. “It would drive my grandmother mad, to see me playing in the dirt with the peasants. But they told me stories, and let me eat carrots without washing them first. And they never complained about my dirty clothes. I didn’t think about laundry so much then.”

“And you think about it now?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I think about how much work it will make for you,” Gilbert admitted, struggling to his knees next to her. She began to protest, but stopped, torn between admonishing him and getting ready to help if he fell. He took his time, finally feeling the dirt beneath his hands before shifting his weight, and grasping her outstretched hands so he might kiss each one. “How red your hands will get scrubbing if I stain something.”  _ I never thought of such things before, _ he wanted to say.  _ But I know how lovely your hands are, and I would not see them red and raw for anything.  _

She pulled her hands away and made a show of searching in front of her for something. “There are radishes in here - if we find enough I’ll slice them and serve them in vinegar for salad,” she offered. Gilbert surveyed the ground, his knee suddenly stiff. “I’ll help you up if you can’t manage yourself,” she said, seeing his hesitation. 

His leg twinged as he moved to survey the plant Margaret was gesturing to, the leaves springing back almost above their heads, forming a kind of battlement around them with leafy tops, its ramparts attended by the bees. There was an earthy smell around them now, of crushed leaves and dirt and sun-warmed fruit, ripening or rotting as it wished. Margaret brushed the soil from around the tops of the radishes, pulling one up and scattering dirt in all directions. Gilbert pretended to take offense and pulled up a radish of his own, sending a shower of dirt back at her. 

Soon the air seemed thick with flying dirt and bits of leaves and then he was reaching around her to pull another before she could get to it and he had knocked her down and suddenly he was atop her, breathing heavily, his leg aching but his eyes fixed on hers, her cap in the dirt behind her, hair a mess of flyaways and lost curls. He couldn't help himself - he kissed her.

It felt like years since they had shared a proper kiss. Little affectionate kisses they had by the dozen, on foreheads and cheeks and the backs of hands, but nothing lasting, nothing at which they had taken their time. Not since that night back at camp two months ago, when he’d woken up and found himself abed with a bullet hole in his leg. He did not know why, though he could hazard a guess - that she felt guilt about it, thinking that somehow she would be taking advantage of him, or, worst still, he of her. But this was his moment, and he would not waste it. Her mouth tasted of salt, and the sun, and she did not turn him away, but kissed him back - slowly at first, and then greedily, remembering her hands so she could clasp the back of his head, his shoulders, the collar of his shirt, making up for two months of unspent kisses while his body was heavy upon hers, making a little noise of pleasure that made Gilbert reach, quite by instinct, for the bottom of her petticoat, as if to raise it up, his hand caressing her stocking and nearly reaching her garter before she made another sound, of pain this time, and bodily shoved him away, sitting up a moment as if to steady herself, her kerchief askew.

“Please - Please not - not...I'm sorry, Gilbert, I'm sorry, but I..." Her words failed.

"It was not you," Gilbert said quickly, lying back and fixing his eyes on the clouds overhead so he would not have to look at her, or the folds of her skirt, or the long white column of her leg, stark against her shoes. "It was my fault." Everything was blue and white clouds and green leaves and dark earth, and there were birds calling in the next field. He could feel his own heart, beating wildly in his chest, _ I want you, Margaret Frances, I dream about you waking and sleeping and I'd leave everything to stay here with you forever, here where there is no war and no guns and threadbare chairs and radishes and farm fields.  _ He thought, too, if he listened hard enough, he could hear Margaret's heart, beating just as wildly. Her hand found his in the dirt, and clasped it, desperately, as if to reassure him it was not his touch she found she could not countenance.

“I wish we didn't have to go back,” she said sadly, looking up at the sky. “But we do.”  _ I wish there were no consequences, but you and I know there are. _

_ I wish that, too _ , Gilbert thought silently, her hand still wrapped around his own. I _ wish you were my wife instead of Adrienne, and we could answer our letters from the little upstairs room like we've done every day, and you could make me dinner and we could read by the fire. I wish you’d let me kiss you as you should be kissed, and give you as many children as you wanted.  _

She withdrew her hand, sitting up and dusting off her skirts. “Let me help you up,” she offered, rising awkwardly to her feet and holding out her hand.

I’ll stay a while,” Gilbert smiled up at her from his position on the ground, squinting against the brightness of the sky. “You won’t always be here to help.” He tried to say it gently, but she knew the truth of it as much as he did - there was only so much help she might offer. One day he would have to regain his footing without her. One day he would have to go home to France. She did not move. “I’ll shout if I need you,” he reassured her, and she let her hand drop, walking back to the house. 

Gilbert watched the clouds a while longer, letting his pulse slow. Today had been a good day. He had made it down the stairs. He had picked onions. He had kissed Margaret.

Something in him had been worried, when they’d first moved to Bethlehem, that he would tire of her, as his friends always tired of their ‘amusements’ - that living with her for two months would take the bloom off the rose and that, seeing her entirely, he would find something in her to despise. But the moment had not come. Kissing her now was still as dear to him as it had been months previously. He knew more about her habits now, certain small annoyances, but underneath she was still Columbine, still the woman he’d fallen in love with, the woman he wanted to keep. He knew Planchet watched this, too - for despite his valet’s best efforts it was becoming clear that the irritable Frenchman was developing a soft spot for Margaret. He chided Gilbert for spilling ink on his cuffs and took it upon himself to tidy around the house and - this was the most telling bit - seemed to be finding more and more reasons to leave the two of them in the house alone. 

He sat up, slowly, spots dancing in his eyes as the blood worked to climb to his head, looking back at the house and just making out Margaret in the window to the kitchen. What would become of them, when the war was over?  _ I could bring her back to France,  _ he thought to himself.  _ She could live at Chavaniac.  _

His daydream was interrupted by the sound of hooves and the soft whiffling of a horse’s breathing. “Miss Frances, is that you?” a man asked from the other side of the fence.

Gilbert recognized the voice and struggled to his feet, his leg aching mightily with the effort as he dragged himself upwards and tried not to stagger. “My dear Doctor!” he announced, giving an abbreviated bow in the direction of the horseman.  “You will please pardon my  _ deshabille _ ; we were attending the garden.”

William Munro smiled at his patient’s dirty knees and dismounted, his expression amused, almost impressed. “What would they think of you in France, sir! I am sure the Marquis of Lafayette does not usually go about cutting his own cabbages.”

“ _ C'est vrai, _ ” Gilbert admitted, picking up Margaret’s forgotten basket and unlatching the gate so Munro could come in, leaving his horse at the fencepost. “ But we are all new men here, are we not? Who is to say a Marquis should not know anything about his garden?”

“You’d better be careful where you take those republican ideals, sir,” the Doctor joked, unlatching his saddlebag to pull out his equipment. “Your own king might not take too kindly to it.” Gilbert said nothing to this, and the young doctor let it lie. “I thought I might come and see how you were getting on,” he explained. “But I see your progress is quicker than I thought. Miss Frances is to be congratulated.”

“She is the very essence of good care,” Gilbert said stalwartly.

Doctor Munro nodded, his smile deeply appreciative. “Would I had six more of her for the hospital.”

“You are in need of help?” The two men walked up to the house, Gilbert’s steps a little slower than he would have liked. He could feel the Doctor watching him move, and it made him uneasy; Would he pronounce him fit already, and send him back to the army? Suddenly taking the stairs and enjoying the sunshine had lost its appeal.

“I can take a man who isn’t fit for battle and train him to bathe wounds and bind them up, but I won’t deny we could do with a few women about the place,” Munro said. “They still say what they do is women’s work, and despise it. It does the men good, I think, to see that someone cares. And a bonny face is a powerful healer on its own,” He added, his smile a little wistful. Gilbert tried not to let his own match it, and opened the door for his guest, nearly running into Margaret as she came to do the same office. For a bare moment they were as close again as they had been in the garden, and he was aware how hot standing out in the sun had made his skin.

“Miss Frances, we have a visitor. A cup of water for the doctor; I imagine the ride from town has tired him.”

“Please don’t trouble,” Munro said from behind him, but Margaret was already in motion, disappearing into the kitchen to fetch an ewer of water and tumblers.

“Will you not sit down?” she offered, her voice loud from the other room. 

Gilbert nodded, gesturing with all the practiced skill of a great host and leading the Doctor into what might have been, in a great house,  called the parlor. What a change had been worked here, since they had come all those months ago! The cobwebs and dust were long since banished,  the grate swept clean and attended by several battered but still serviceable chairs and a small tea table between them. Their upholstery had seen better days, but a shawl was draped across the back of one, a fine Turkey weave that Planchet had brought to keep his master warm, and the effect was not unpleasant, rather more that of unpretentious wealth usually found in the houses of the oldest families, the very shabbiness of the decor a highlight to the quality and strength of its construction, or the great age it had endured in the same hands.

The Marquis invited his guest into a chair and took a seat himself, letting Margaret bustle in with the tray, two cups, and a simple stoneware jug of water. “Can I fetch anything else, Doctor?” she asked politely, withdrawing a little. 

“Just privacy, thank you, Miss Frances.” She nodded and removed to the kitchen while Gilbert, sensing where this was leading, began untying the laces of his shirt so the Doctor could perform his necessary offices. His chest was examined, his breathing monitored and his heartbeat timed, and then let his his trousers drop so the wound could be palpated, the skin probed. “This has scarred very nicely,” the Doctor observed. “I must ask Miss Frances for her secret. It will never really go away, but...something to charm the ladies with,” he said with what must have passed for his roguish smile. Gilbert tried not to too think too long on the particular lady he wished would continue giving attention to his scar and pulled his breeches up again. “And you’ve not noticed any changes urinating, or...flying the flag?”  

“ _ Tout en ordre _ ,” he reported shortly. The less talk there was of flying flags the better - his dreams had been having that consequence all too often of late.

 “Good,” Munro pronounced. “I know I’ve little enough influence, but I’d like to see you walking, more, before you go back to the Army. No sense having you fall off your horse and break a leg after we’ve spent all this time putting it to rights the first time, eh?” He stood up and let Gilbert button himself back into his breeches. “Perhaps a walk into town to see the hospital, when you’re up to it. I’m sure the patients would love to be reviewed by the famous Marquis.”

“When Miss Frances permits,” Lafayette acknowledged, glimpsing a sliver of her apron through a crack at the door. Had she been watching the whole time? 

 “Will you stay for dinner, Doctor? It’s nothing special, but I’m sure the Marquis would be pleased of the company.”

 “Much as I might enjoy that, Miss Frances, I am only here to check my patient’s progress. I would not like to put you out. And I’m needed back,” the Doctor said, though the look on his face said enough about his regret about it.

 “Then will you not take something from the garden? I’ve more onions that we can reasonably eat. As a payment for the lemon,” Margaret urged. _The lemon?_ Ah, yes - the sore throat he’d had a week past. Hot lemon and honey. Had that been from Munro? Margaret hadn’t said, but it had felt like an extravagance. 

Munro smiled at that. “For the lemon, then,” he said, following her outside into the garden and waiting patiently in the path while she pulled several onions for him. Gilbert watched from the shadow of the doorway, Munro’s dark coat standing out against the browning, end-of-summer grass, Margaret’s head disappearing into the garden as she bent over. Gilbert admired the view a moment, remembering, far too long ago, how that particular part of her anatomy had felt under his hands in the Pennsylvania woods. She straightened up, and Munro made a show of rearranging his gaze. Had ...he been admiring Margaret, too?

Gilbert felt his skin flush hot, his gaze suddenly sharp upon the doctor and his nurse. Munro’s smile seemed now not merely pleasant, but happy, and his hands lingered too long on Margaret’s when he took the vegetables she offered. They stood in the path talking a minute, the Doctor’s smile hopeful while Margaret hung back a little, her usual, pleasant self. Gilbert had seen the same vague smile on her face a thousand times in camp when she meant to rebuff whatever offer was doubtless coming - but all the same, it made him uneasy, watching the two of them in the sun. William Munro, with his credentials from Edinburgh and his talk of a practice in Boston and a house he owned there, who spoke eloquently about what a capable wife could do and was never without a compliment to hand, who fit into a picture of Margaret’s life better than Gilbert did.

 

When she came back into the house and inquired if he wanted anything, he asked only for his writing case and would not meet her eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the long break - I'm coming to realize that I enjoy having these characters in this state of wonderful possibility instead of giving them an ending. 
> 
> (You will all note the lemon made another appearance. Just for you.)


	14. Parte Quatorze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret Frances has been giving a lot of thought to the ways of men.

She already knew about the look.

 

Physician or private soldier, surgeon or stevedore, she'd met enough men since joining Washington's army to know that they were all the same, every man jack of them, with an opinion of a woman's worth that stretched no further than the nearest bedroll or backalley. Margaret had had the same look from a thousand men since she'd left New York and she expected she'd have a thousand after, and after all this time, it was far out of her mind to care, so long as it was nothing more than looking - which, so far, had been her good luck.

 

And it  _ was _ luck  - there were hundreds of women following Washington's army and some of them were wives and some were whores and some drew no line between the two as long as there was fair payment involved, and between all of these there was no telling one from another. In the city, before the war, a man would go to a particular part of town if he had an itch that wanted scratching, but here in camp everyone was jumbled together and most soldiers assumed if you were wearing a skirt you were good for a tumble in the nearest haystack if the coin was to be had - or even if it wasn't. 

 

It was only by virtue of her father's position as sergeant that every Tom, Dick and Harry in the artillery company hadn't declared her company property along with the gun, and she knew that someday, somehow, that luck would run out. They respected her father, true enough, but if he was killed, the only way for her mother to stay was to marry again - and they would say that she was old enough for the wedding bed, too, and then she'd have to chose.

 

To think she used to be Miss Frances, who had a door behind which she could flirt with her callers and lace on her caps and shoes that didn't leak when it rained. Miss Frances who could write a page as cleanly as any clerk and dance a figure as pretty as you please and sew a seam as fine as could be required and whose father had a sure position at a respectable firm -- and the possibility of a job waiting for the young man who caught his daughter's eye. 

 

(No one knew about Margaret Frances who'd been too quick once and been burned for it. But she had silence for her sins.)

 

And now she was Maggie Frances the laundress, who was too proud and gave herself airs above her station and was rumored to be knocking heels with the company commander for all the preference he gave her father. 

 

She hoped Colonel Hamilton never heard that last one, or he might get ideas. 

 

No, that was unkind  - Colonel Hamilton might be the sort to lark about (and he did lark about, when his purse allowed), but he seemed to respect her, more than most, and saw her for more than a pair of ankles he might uncross at leisure. There were good reasons the Frances women did the Colonel's laundry, and Margaret Frances' fine seams were most of them, and Bill Frances' fine copperplate in the company books were the rest. (The Colonel did like tidy books; his own hand was bold and quick, and he was forever writing something - which was why he was one of the General's secretaries now even while other, better bred men waited for preferment.)

 

It would have brought her money, giving in to all those sly looks and pinched bottoms and palmed breasts. But once that rose was plucked, there was no having it back again - it was gone, and she'd have to live with its absence. 

 

(Silence for her sins again - what wasn't missing wasn't lost, not yet.)

 

The war wouldn't last forever, and after it was done (and whoever would win had done their winning) there would be towns to rebuild and businesses to run and men of better, surer positions who would need wives. And Margaret Frances wanted to be among them and not down in the gutters, begging for scraps.  _ He's a good man, _ her mother would say, after one or another of her father's soldiers had a private word with her while she was about her business. _ You could do worse _ .

 

_ But I have done worse, Mother - and I could do better, _ Margaret thought to herself. And sure enough, when this man or that one died the next week, the next month, she counted herself lucky that she hadn't succumbed to a wishful smile and her mother's urging as the man's wife or sweetheart, looking tired and dazed and sad, found herself the object of universal interest from the unmarried men of the company, everyone knowing that if she did not remarry or find another protector, she would have to leave and go home. Home to what, Margaret often wondered. Sometimes there was no home at all. She’d nothing to return to, if it came to it. 

 

(No home was like having a promise and no contract, a warm memory and a cold look the next day in the street,  the banns in the paper with another girl's name beside his. No home was full of fear, a thing that should have brought pleasure and instead brought pain.)

 

Who was to say they would win, anyhow? If they lost perhaps it would be better to marry a man in a red coat instead of a blue one - and not have the stain of having once been married to a rebel. She did not relish that prospect, but it was there. Miss Frances in her fine house with her caps and gowns hadn’t given a fig for what would happen in six months or a year, but Maggie Frances paid it all the attention in the world, weighing and measuring her chances like the canniest of merchants.

 

And then Gilbert came. Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, with his foreign phrases and broken English and wide smile, the young Frenchman who attached himself to the Colonel upon his arrival and took Hamilton as his teacher in everything American, who was so tall and with such red hair that the rest of the women tittered and joked at what he must have looked like with his uniform off. Gilbert who was so kind and so exuberant and so much in love with everything he seemed to see and hear in America.  

 

Including, it seemed, Margaret. He was  _ infatuated  _ with Margaret.

 

She'd forgotten what it was like to be courted, pursued. He did not come with silver in hand, as some of the officers did, but with words, words the like of which she hadn't heard in years, that she was beautiful, that she was desireable, that she was worth the time spent in waiting.  _ Forgive me, _ she wrote back. _ I am unused to getting what I want _ . Because she did want him, all his smiles and his lanky limbs and the red of his hair. (She distrusted that want, when it was just that he was tall and well-proportioned, but later she wanted his laughter, his songs, and she could not feel guilty for that.) She even wanted him when she learned he was married, with a wife and a child at home in France, and she wanted him when he was laid out on a table and she was bid to cut a ball from his thigh, and she wanted him even more as he lay, white and feverish, in a small bed in Bethlehem, and trembled beneath her hand. Wanted to love him, to care for him, to not loose him and whatever this was between them that felt too vast to be called love.

 

And she wanted him in the garden, as he lay atop her and took two months worth of kisses.  _ You could do worse, _ they said.  _ You could do worse. He's a man of wealth and property, with farms and estates and he loves you, Margaret, he'd do anything for you. _

 

But is that better or worse, she had often wondered, as she had studied him during their early days in Bethlehem while he slept and the terrible argument went round and round in her head. What good is all that when he leaves? When he dies? Oh, they liked Lady Washington and Lady Sterling and Mrs. Knox well enough, but there seemed to be a special level of ignominy reserved for women who only slept with officers without the ring that ought to go with it.

 

(He'd had money and fine suits and sweet words, the son of the man who employed her father, and what had that gotten her? A ring that he said was silver and was really brass.)

 

She'd leapt after him at Brandywine, even after they'd argued, wanting so badly to make it right. But while he'd recovered his strength, she'd recovered her wits - this was foolish, this little charade. In a few months it'd be done, his leg would be healed, and they would be back with the army, and she would be proud Maggie Frances again, who hadn't the time of day for anyone.  _ Too good for us now that she's had royal blood on her hands - an officer’s doxy.  _ She could almost hear them talking now,  _ bet you she got up to something while she was away. Bet you she tupped him, just like she tupped the Colonel. _

 

She was so close to letting him up her skirts in the garden, but he had stopped when she’d said no.

She loved that he did not feel it was his right to take anything from her - but there were some nights when she wished he would. The first day he had been on his feet, taking shuffling steps around his room with his arm around Planchet’s shoulder, she greased the hinges of every door in the house and left hers unlatched, and undressed while the candle still burned, her back to the door, wishing she would hear it move and he would make her mind up for her. And she had done the same every night since.

 

She knew about Doctor Munro's look, even before she came back to the house with the ribbon in her pocket and saw Gilbert scowling into his book. She'd known of Munro's interest for a while, answering it back with politeness that she hoped he, having been raised in nicer society, knew for what it was. But he wasn't the only man in the hospital, as Gilbert was not the only man in Washington's camp. She'd begun to dread her trips to town, not for his company but the stares and the whispers that followed _ , that's that nurse who's tending the Frenchie. Too pretty to be just a nurse, though. Bet she’s his harlot. Bet she’s his whore. _

 

She left Gilbert in his chair with a shawl around his shoulders and his writing case and went to finish cooking dinner in a slowly darkening house. Fall was approaching quickly, a time for armies to gather their wits and pull into winter quarters, and now with Gilbert’s leg mostly mended, it would soon be time for them to join him. They would have to lock up the house and return to the army, for Gilbert to be feted by his friends and his commander, and for Margaret - 

 

Well, the less said about what words would be used for Margaret the better.

 

She laid a hand against her pocket, feeling the little fold of ribbon there. A man of position, with a profession to earn his keep, with a steady head for his business.  _ You could do worse, Margaret Frances. He likes you. Look at how many things he’s pressed into your hands and smiled to part with. _

 

_ But you could --  _

 

No, that wasn’t true. Could she do better than that?

 

She stirred her insecurities into the stew and tried not to think about it any more.

 

With Planchet gone playing courier, it was just the two of them at dinner. Gilbert had relaxed a little since the episode earlier, but he was still uneasy, disappointed - though not with her, she thought. No, he seemed more disappointed with himself.  _ Oh, Harlequin, how you suffer under that mask of yours.  _ Of course it was  _ his  _ fault that Munro was the kind of man who might make a better husband for her, that Gilbert was rich and foriegn  (and already married, only a minor obstacle), and William (William! Heavens, when had he become that?) poorly-paid but single, a star to which she might reasonably aspire. She could go with Gilbert, to Paris or some such place, and wear fine gowns and live in a great house and daily wait upon his pleasure, but that seemed - well,  what use was there for her in being a rich man’s mistress when one wished to (and could!)  marry respectably? She could see him tallying his shortcomings as he shuffled a bit of carrot around his bowl with his spoon, finally pushing the bowl away. 

 

“Shall we take the stairs together?” she asked, when the dishes were put away and the fire had been banked down. He’d done a good job of going down earlier by himself, but she didn’t quite trust him to go up again entirely on his own. (And if he could, what use was there for her any longer?)

 

GIlbert's arm around her shoulders as they climbed the stairs had more to do with possession than balance, their bodies wedged tightly together as they climbed. He did not seem relieved by the time they reached the top but rather sad, their moment of closeness gone, and he turned to go back to his room, the door ajar.

 

She looked at her own door, thinking of the latch, the candle, the well-oiled hinge. It was not enough. 

 

"Gilbert, wait." Before she could think she had pressed him against the wall, her lips performing every apology she could think of while his hands found her waist again and cupped her close, warm even through her petticoats.  _ I'd rather you than Munro _ , she wanted to say, _ perhaps he's safe but you're you, the time is short and the days are short and it will be night, they said I was sleeping with other men and they'll say when we come back that I've slept with you, and you're the only one I wished were true _ . 

 

_ If they will say that I’m a sinner then let me at least enjoy my sins.  _

 

She drew her hand back from his hips and moved his hand to the ties of her skirt, helping his fingers with the knots, letting the heavy drape of her petticoats drop, one by one, to the floor, as noiseless as the door when Gilbert finally closed it behind them.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it only took 14 chapters, but here, finally, is the woman herself telling her side of the story. (Albeit in a very condensed and slightly guarded way.) Including some of the much alluded-to backstory, which I will let you draw your own conclusions on. 
> 
> (And that business undressing at the end of the chapter. I know a lot of you were waiting for that, too.)
> 
> As I spent more and more time with Margaret and Gilbert in Bethlehem, I realised I'd really backed Margaret into a corner - regardless of what she does, she'll be judged as having acted improperly. Which worked in her favor, really, because she does what she's wanted to do but been prevented from doing since day one. But this had to be her decision, not something that was forced upon her - she had to be the author and agent of the whole thing and Gilbert certainly couldn't start it - though he did help catalyze her a little in the garden. So... here she is. I'm not sure where this leaves her the next morning, though - anyone in the audience have any thoughts?


End file.
